Of all the people who shared in the scramble for empire, Joseph Conrad became known for turning his back on the dark continents of ‘overflowing riches’. After years as a sailor in different merchant navies, Conrad removed himself to the sedentary life of writing fiction. Conrad’s best-known books, Lord Jim (1900), Heart of Darkness (published in book form in 1902), Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907), draw on ideas from Darwin, Nietzsche and Nordau to explore the great fault-line between scientific, liberal and technical optimism in the twentieth century and pessimism about human
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