Written at various times, under various influences, the four stories contained in Within the Tides are linked by Conrad’s treatment of loyalty and betrayal. They range in setting from the Far East via eighteenth-century Spain to England. The tone shifts from the tragic inevitability of The Planter of Malata and the pathos of Because of the Dollars to the gothic The Inn of the Two Witches and the grim humour of The Vartner. The form of the stories was experimental but does not obscure Conrad’s humanity or his search for moral truth.

Joseph Conrad, was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. The stories contained in this volume take rank with the most mature and romantic of his work. The charming love and adventure of the life which he depicts in remote places confirm the growing belief that he is among the greatest of living creative writers.

Chance is narrated by Conrad’s regular narrator, Charles Marlow, but is characterized by a complex, nested narrative in which different narrators take up the story at different points. The novel is also unusual among its author’s works for its focus on a female character: the heroine, Flora de Barral. The narrators describe and attempt to interpret various episodes in the life of the Miss de Barral, the daughter of a convicted swindler, named Smith de Barral.