Jugend: Ein Bericht (Fritz Lorch translation) Add a review

"Youth" is an autobiographical work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1898 and collected in the eponymous collection Youth, A Narrative; and Two Other Stories in 1902.

This volume also includes the novella Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether, "assembled by a publisher with no artistic rationale beyond that of hitting a favorable page count". Conrad intended "Youth" to be published in a trilogy consisting of three Marlow stories: "Youth", Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim — "Eastern sea stories that are all based on factual events and personages about British commanding officers on unseaworthy ships; all constructed as non-chronological frame-narratives; and all told in the style of a real-life raconteur speaking to an audience of close acquaintances, in informal and safe settings." The economics of publishing did not support the odd pairing of a story and a novella with a lengthy novel. Thus, “the trilogy conceived by the author as a single book with ‘unity of artistic purpose,’ what we might now call a composite novel, has never been published, while a different trilogy [Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories] . . . has remained in print and widely read for a century”.

"Youth" depicts a young man's first journey to the Far East. It is narrated by Charles Marlow who is also the narrator of Lord Jim, Chance, and Heart of Darkness. The narrator's introduction suggests this is the first time, chronologically, the character Marlow appears in Conrad's works (the narrator comments that he thinks Marlow spells his name this way).

"Youth" is a dramatic rendering of Conrad's experience on the vessel Palestine in 1881.