Having worked on the book from October 1912 to May 1914, Conrad published
Victory:
An Island Tale(1915) when he was 57, towards the end of his writing-career. It is a transitional novel, not often now considered alongside his earlier masterpieces such as
Nostromo(1904) or
The Secret Agent(1907), but superior to anything of comparable length that he wrote afterwards. It was written at a time when Conrad was suddenly gaining the enormous success he had always wanted, but not with the work he would have felt merited it. With the book publication of
Chance, the year before
Victory, Conrad had begun to become a popular author. After years of debt and anxiety in which he produced half-a-dozen masterpieces, success came at the moment his creative powers had reached an ebb-tide.
Set in
1954 words
Citation: Childs, Peter. "Victory: An Island Tale". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 July 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8618, accessed 23 November 2024.]
