After the publication of Almayer's Folly, Conrad began producing a number of books in rapid succession, many of which featured plots about sailors and travel to explore moral ambiguity and the nature of human identity. The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897) concerns a tubercular Black sailor whose impending death affects his fellow crewmen in a number of profound ways. Lord Jim (1900) examines the effects of a cowardly act and how this act's moral repercussions haunt a man until his death. (Lord Jim's story is told by Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness.) In 1902, Conrad published Heart of Darkness, a short novel detailing Marlow's journey into the Belgian Congo — and the metaphorical "heart of darkness" of man. All three books were highly regarded in their time and are still widely read and studied today. In 1904, Nostromo was published; the complex tale of an imaginary South American republic. The effects of greed and foreign exploitation helped to define Conrad's oblique and sometimes difficult narrative style. Although he produced a large body of work, Conrad was often a slow writer who felt the pressure of deadlines and the need to keep writing to keep his family financially solvent. His struggles were eased, however, in 1910, when John Quinn, an American lawyer, bought all of Conrad's manuscripts and awarded him a small pension.
Conrad continued writing tales of travel, but also turned his attention to novels of political intrigue. The Secret Agent (1907) concerns a group of anarchists who plan to blow up the Greenwich Observatory; Under Western Eyes (1911), set in nineteenth-century Czarist Russia, follows the life of a student who betrays his friend — the assassin of a government official — to the authorities. His story "The Secret Sharer" (1912) uses the "Doppelganger theme" (where a man meets his figurative double) to examine what Conrad viewed as the shifting nature of human identity and the essential isolation of all human beings. In 1913, Chance was a great success both critically and financially; the novel, like Heart of Darkness, explores the ways in which an innocent person (like Marlow) becomes hardened by the horrors that surround her. Other novels marked by these essential Conradian themes include The Inheritors (cowritten with Ford Maddox Ford, 1901), Victory (1915), and The Shadow-Line (1917). Conrad also turned to autobiography: The Mirror of the Sea (1906), A Personal Record (1912), and Notes on Life and Letters (1921). All treat his seafaring days and development as an artist.
Conrad died of heart failure on August 3, 1924. He was buried in Canterbury Cemetery and survived by his wife and sons (Borys and John). Still honored by millions of readers as one of the greatest modern writers, Conrad left behind a large body of work whose nature he defined (in his Preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus") as "a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect."
