A Set of Six

Joseph Conrad

Jan 1948 · Minerva Press

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238

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A Set of Six is a collection of loosely connected stories unified by themes of betrayal, loyalty, and the collision of personal ethics with political upheaval. Unlike his novels, these tales ranging from nautical adventures to psychological dramas lack a singular account arc but share Conrad's preoccupation with moral ambiguity. "Gaspar Ruiz," a South American revolutionary saga, dissects the absurdity of heroism as its protagonist shifts allegiances between factions, only to be crushed by the very myths he enables. "The Informer" satirizes anarchist circles in London, exposing performative radicalism through a manipulative double agent who weaponizes idealism. "The Brute" offers a grim maritime parable where a cursed ship becomes a metaphor for humanity's capacity for self destruction. Conrad's prose shifts tonally from ironic detachment in "An Anarchist," a darkly comic account of a coerced factory worker, to visceral intensity in "The Duel," a Napoleonic era feud spiraling into absurdist ritual. While dismissed by some as minor works, the stories reveal Conrad experimenting with form: fragmented timelines, unreliable narrators, and abrupt shifts between tragedy and farce. Critically, the collection questions how ideologies anarchism, militarism, colonialism corrode individual agency, reducing lives to pawns in games of power.

This modern edition of Conrad's classic novel includes a fresh Afterword, extensive reference materials including a timeline of Conrad's life and works, character glossary and group discussion questions on this literary classic. The text of the novel has been slightly edited to remove archaic terminology and make it more readable to the modern reader.

The stories function as fractured mirrors showing Conrad's skepticism toward grand narratives. In "The Duel," two officers obsessively duel across decades, their personal vendetta absurdly outlasting the wars that once gave it meaning a metaphor for how hatred outlives its causes. "Il Conde," a deceptively quiet tale of a refined aristocrat blackmailed in Naples, strips away the veneer of European civility to reveal predation lurking beneath social niceties. Conrad's anarchists are not revolutionaries but hollow men: the titular informer in "The Informer" orchestrates betrayal not for ideology, but for the perverse thrill of exposing others' hypocrisy. Even the sea, a recurring symbol in Conrad's work, loses its romanticism here. In "The Brute," the ship is a silent accomplice to human folly, its malevolence passive yet inescapable. The collection's power lies in its refusal to resolve moral tensions. Gaspar Ruiz dies a hero to those who despise him; the anarchist in "An Anarchist" becomes a mechanized slave to the system he once opposed. Conrad threads these tales with a quiet fatalism, suggesting that in a world where ideologies metastasize, survival demands complicity or retreat into isolating delusion. Unlike his novels, A Set of Six offers no catharsis, only a gallery of lives warped by forces they cannot name, let alone control.

A Set of Six is a collection of loosely connected stories unified by themes of betrayal, loyalty, and the collision of personal ethics with political upheaval. Unlike his novels, these tales ranging from nautical adventures to psychological dramas lack a singular account arc but share Conrad's pr...

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About the author

Joseph Conrad (1857 to 1924) was a Polish born British novelist who became one of the most influential writers in English literature despite not learning the language until his twenties. Born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Berdychiv, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), Conrad experienced early tragedy when both his parents died by the time he was eleven, leaving him to be raised by his uncle. At seventeen, he moved to Marseille and began a career as a merchant seaman, eventually joining the British Merchant Navy and spending nearly twenty years at sea, including voyages to the Congo that would later inspire his masterpiece "Heart of Darkness." After settling in England and marrying Jessie George in 1896, Conrad turned to writing, producing novels that drew heavily on his maritime experiences and explored themes of moral ambiguity, psychological complexity, and the darker parts of human nature and colonialism. His major works, including "Lord Jim," "Nostromo," and "The Secret Agent," established him as a master of modernist literature, employing new account techniques such as unreliable narrators and non linear storytelling. Despite struggling with depression and financial difficulties throughout much of his writing career, Conrad's deep psychological insights and his ability to capture the isolation and moral conflicts of individuals in extreme circumstances secured his reputation as one of the greatest novelists of the early twentieth century.

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