Reading Order
ChanceJoseph Conrad Chance Reading Order
Joseph Conrad's Chance (1913) was his first popular success — his most commercially successful novel and the one that rescued him from years of financial anxiety. The novel follows Flora de Barral, whose father is imprisoned for fraud when she is young, and who eventually marries Captain Anthony, a romantic sea officer; it is organized around Marlow's reconstruction of their story from fragments and witnesses. Chance is both Conrad's most complex narrative structure (Marlow hearing a story from a man who heard it from a woman who observed it) and his most sustained attempt to portray a woman as a central consciousness.
Where to start
Heart of Darkness
Complete Chance Book List
- 1Buy
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad·1899·The essential Conrad entry point — the foundational text for Conrad's use of Marlow as a narrator who reconstructs a story from fragments, which Chance develops to its most complex extreme; read this first to understand Marlow's narrative method before encountering its most elaborate deployment. - 2Buy
Chance
Joseph Conrad·1913·The novel itself — Flora de Barral, Captain Anthony, Marlow, the Ferndale, and the elaborate multi-layered narrative reconstruction. - 3Buy
Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad·1900·The companion in Conrad's Marlow novels — the most extended and complex earlier Marlow narrative; reading Lord Jim before Chance gives the fullest understanding of what Marlow is and what Conrad can do with him. - 4Buy
Victory
Joseph Conrad·1915·The companion in Conrad's late novels — the romantic narrative about a philosophical recluse and the woman he rescues; the comparison with Chance shows the range of Conrad's late romantic period. - 5Buy
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton·1905·The essential American parallel — Lily Bart's destruction by the social and economic forces of Gilded Age New York; the comparison with Flora de Barral (whose father's imprisonment gives her the same social vulnerability) shows how the same question (what happens to a woman with no economic protection) looks in different national and class contexts. - 6Buy
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy·1891·Hardy's portrait of Tess's destruction by the hypocrisies of Victorian sexual morality — the Victorian predecessor in the tradition of the novel about a young woman whose vulnerability makes her the victim of forces she cannot control; the direct literary ancestor of Chance's portrait of Flora de Barral. - 7Buy
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald·1925·The essential American parallel in the tradition of the first-person narrator who reconstructs another person's story — Nick Carraway reconstructing Gatsby's life; the comparison with Marlow's multi-layered reconstruction of Flora's story shows how two very different narrative methods serve the same basic purpose: making an absent person present through the testimony of those who knew them.
Chance — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Joseph Conrad's Chance about?
Chance follows Flora de Barral, whose father is imprisoned for financial fraud when she is young and who grows up in isolation. She eventually marries Captain Anthony of the ship Ferndale, and the novel traces their relationship and the obstacles to it — narrated by Marlow through a complicated system of secondhand accounts from various witnesses, filtered through an unnamed primary narrator.
Why was Chance Conrad's first popular success?
Chance broke through to a wide audience for several reasons: it was serialized in the New York Herald with illustrations; it was his first novel with a woman as the central subject; and it appeared at a moment when Conrad's reputation among serious readers had created a large audience waiting for his next work. The romantic plot — a rescuing captain and the damaged woman he loves — was more commercially accessible than his earlier, bleaker work.
Is Chance a good starting point for Conrad?
Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, or Nostromo are better starting points — they are more representative of Conrad's strengths and more widely discussed. Chance is best approached after you have a feel for Conrad's method from his major works, when the complexity of its narrative structure and its place in his development become most interesting.
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