Reading Order
The Nigger of the NarcissusJoseph Conrad The Nigger of the Narcissus Reading Order
Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897) is his first fully achieved work of fiction — the story of the cargo ship Narcissus's voyage from Bombay to London, organized around the dying Black seaman James Wait, whose presence disrupts the ship's moral community. The novel is accompanied by Conrad's famous Preface, one of the most important statements of literary aesthetics in English, in which he argues that the task of fiction is 'before all, to make you see.' Often considered the work that established Conrad's moral territory and formal method for everything that followed.
Where to start
Heart of Darkness
Complete The Nigger of the Narcissus Book List
- 1Buy
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad·1899·The essential Conrad — the foundational text that Nigger of the Narcissus prepares; read this first to understand Conrad's full range before returning to this earlier, more concentrated work. - 2Buy
The Nigger of the Narcissus
Joseph Conrad·1897·The novella itself — the Narcissus's voyage from Bombay to London, James Wait, Singleton, Donkin, and the storm off the Cape of Good Hope. - 3Buy
Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad·1900·The companion in Conrad's major work — the immediate successor, in which the moral questions The Nigger of the Narcissus raises about cowardice, community, and responsibility are developed at full novel length through Marlow's reconstruction of Jim's life. - 4Buy
Typhoon
Joseph Conrad·1902·The companion in Conrad's sea novellas — the more comic version of the same material (a ship in extreme weather, the test of command); the comparison shows the range of Conrad's sea fiction from the dark mortality of Nigger of the Narcissus to the comic endurance of MacWhirr. - 5Buy
Billy Budd, Sailor
Herman Melville·1924·Melville's final novella — the innocent sailor condemned to death by the law that cannot accommodate innocence; the essential American parallel in the tradition of the sea novella organized around a figure who disrupts the moral community of a ship, as James Wait disrupts the Narcissus. - 6Buy
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville·1851·The essential predecessor in the American sea-fiction tradition — the foundational work that Conrad knew well and whose influence can be felt in Nigger of the Narcissus's ambition to use a sea voyage as a moral allegory for the human condition. - 7Buy
Two Years Before the Mast
Richard Henry Dana Jr.·1840·Dana's memoir of a merchant seaman's two years before the mast — the foundational non-fiction text in the tradition of sea literature that Conrad inherits; the essential source for understanding what life at sea in the age of sail was actually like, which gives context to Conrad's fictional exploration of the same world.
The Nigger of the Narcissus — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Nigger of the Narcissus about?
The Nigger of the Narcissus follows the cargo ship Narcissus on its voyage from Bombay to London. The 'nigger' of the title is James Wait, a Black West Indian sailor who claims to be sick and dying, and whose presence divides the crew between those who resent him and those who are drawn to him with a sympathy that Conrad portrays as a form of moral weakness.
What is Conrad's Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus about?
Conrad's Preface is one of the most important statements of literary aesthetics in English — it argues that the task of the artist is 'before all, to make you see.' Conrad argues that the novel's highest purpose is to achieve, through language, what painting achieves through form and color: the rendering of visible truth that bypasses argument and goes directly to the reader's experience.
Is the title of The Nigger of the Narcissus considered offensive?
The title uses the word 'nigger' as it was commonly used in the late nineteenth century — as a descriptor rather than exclusively as a slur. Many editions since the mid-twentieth century have appeared under the alternative title The N-Word of the 'Narcissus' or Children of the Sea. Readers today typically approach the title with the historical context understood; the novel itself treats James Wait with a moral complexity that complicates any simple reading of Conrad's racial attitudes.
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