CONRAD, Joseph (1857-1924). Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1902.

A bright, fine copy of the first edition of Conrad's most important collection of stories, including "The Heart of Darkness." The three collected stories, "Youth," "Heart of Darkness," and "The End of the Tether," had all appeared previously in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Cyril Connolly counts "Heart of Darkness," along with Conrad's The Secret Agent, among the top hundred works in The Modern Movement: "This account of a superman running an ivory business in the heart of the Congo for a greedy sanctimonious Belgian company and brutalizing himself and the natives in the process, is a masterpiece of sinister deterioration seen by a narrator who is himself profoundly altered by it." Cagle A7a(1); Connolly The Modern Movement 14.

Octavo. Half-title (a little spotting to preliminaries). With 32 pp. ads at rear dated 10⁄02. Original green cloth stamped in black (slight crease to cloth mid-spine).