Other editions of book Chance: A Tale in Two Parts

Chance(1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's long struggle to achieve some dignity and happiness makes her Conrad's most moving female character. Reflecting the contemporary interest in the New Woman and the Suffragette question, Chance also marks the final appearance of Marlow, Conrad's most effective and wise narrator. This revised edition uses the English first edition text and has a new chronology and bibliography. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!

Chance is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1913 following serial publication the previous year. Chance is narrated by Conrad's regular narrator, Charles Marlow, but is characterised by a complex, nested narrative in which different narrators take up the story at different points. The novel is also unusual among its author's works for its focus on a female character: the heroine, Flora de Barral.

Chance(1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's long struggle to achieve some dignity and happiness makes her Conrad's most moving female character. Reflecting the contemporary interest in the New Woman and the Suffragette question, Chance also marks the final appearance of Marlow, Conrad's most effective and wise narrator. This revised edition uses the English first edition text and has a new chronology and bibliography. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

I believe he had seen us out of the window coming off to dine in the dinghy of a fourteen-ton yawl belonging to Marlow my host and skipper. We helped the boy we had with us to haul the boat up on the landing-stage before we went up to the riverside inn, where we found our new acquaintance eating his dinner in dignified loneliness at the head of a long table, white and inhospitable like a snow bank.The red tint of his clear-cut face with trim short black whiskers under a cap of curly iron-grey hair was the only warm spot in the dinginess of that room cooled by the cheerless tablecloth. We knew him already by sight as the owner of a little five-ton cutter, which he sailed alone apparently, a fellow yachtsman in the unpretending band of fanatics who cruise at the mouth of the Thames. But the first time he addressed the waiter sharply as ‘steward’ we knew him at once for a sailor as well as a yachtsman.Presently he had occasion to reprove that same waiter for the slovenly manner in which the dinner was served. He did it with considerable energy and then turned to us.“If we at sea,” he declared, “went about our work as people ashore high and low go about theirs we should never make a living. No one would employ us. And moreover no ship navigated and sailed in the happy-go- lucky manner people conduct their business on shore would ever arrive into port.”Since he had retired from the sea he had been astonished to discover that the educated people were not much better than the others. No one seemed to take any proper pride in his work: from plumbers who were simply thieves to, say, newspaper men (he seemed to think them a specially intellectual class) who never by any chance gave a correct version of the simplest affair. This universal inefficiency of what he called “the shore gang” he ascribed in general to the want of responsibility and to a sense of security.

Chance tells the story of Flora de Barral, the vulnerable abandoned daughter of a bankrupt tycoon, who struggles to achieve dignity and happiness; 'no consideration, no delicacy, no tenderness, no scruples should stand in the way of a woman ... from taking the shortest cut towards securing for herself the easiest possible existence.’ It is narrated by different narrators, including Conrad's regular narrator, Charles Marlow, who describe and attempt to interpret various episodes in Flora’s life and is the only book to focus on a female character.