Lord Jim

About Lord Jim

Conrad tells Jim's story through recollections, witnesses, and Marlow's unsettled interpretation. The delayed sequence makes the reasons for an action harder to isolate than the action itself. Idealism and self-invention remain under pressure from other people's judgments, and from the distance between the courageous self a person imagines and what circumstances reveal.

Reading focus

Read a psychologically intricate sea narrative about disgrace, self-invention, and the difficulty of understanding another person's decisive moment.

This reading edition contains 129,314 words in 45 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.

Author: Joseph Conrad. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.

Opening excerpt

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.

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