Heart of Darkness | Critical Overview

When published in 1902 in a volume with two other stories (Youth and The End of the Tether), Heart of Darkness was praised for its portrayal of the demoralizing effect life in the African wilderness supposedly had on European men. One respected critic of the time, Hugh Clifford, said in the Spectator that others before Conrad had written of the European's decline in a ‘‘barbaric’’ wilderness, but never ‘‘has any writer till now succeeded in bringing … it all home to sheltered folk as does Mr. Conrad in...

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