Maggs Bros.

The correct first issue, with the publisher’s advertisements at the rear dated ‘10/02’, rather than ‘11/02’. A very good copy overall, neat contemporary ownership inscription to front free endpaper, old tape stains to front and rear endpapers, some faint toning to contents but otherwise generally internally clean, extremities slightly worn, spine toned with some vertical creasing, lower corners gently bumped. Increasingly hard to find in good order.

Youth marks the first book appearance of Conrad’s legendary novella Heart of Darkness. It sold no more than 4500 copies until the Popular Edition of 1919, and Heart of Darkness didn’t begin to achieve its iconic status until the 1930s, when it was championed by Graham Greene, particularly in his Journey Without Maps of 1936, where it is mentioned by name three times. In 1961 Greene wrote that ‘Reading Conrad - the volume called Youth for the sake of Heart of Darkness - the first time since I abandoned him about 1932, because his influence on me was too great and too disastrous. The heavy hypnotic style falls around me again, and I am aware of the poverty of my own. Perhaps now I have lived long enough with my poverty to be safe from corruption.’ Francis Ford Coppola famously recast the story, originally set up an un-named West African river, in Vietnam for his great film Apocalypse Now, released in 1979.

Cagle, A7, a(1).