For Conrad the publication of what is now regarded as his consummate achievement in the art of fiction turned out to be a strangely uneasy event. Despite the usual family illnesses and financial problems, the first draft had been written in the remarkably short time of nine months, February to October 1906, and without the usual outcries of compositional anguish. But as he reached the stage of serialization, October 1906 to January 1907, and then of revision for book-publication, when he added 28,000 words to the original draft during May to July 1907, he suddenly seemed to lose confidence – though less perhaps in the novel itself than in the thought of the reception that awaited it.

Our main evidence for this is his correspondence, which whenever it touches on the work-in-progress acquires a strangely defensive note. On 12 September 1906, he wrote to John Galsworthy, to whom he had sent part of the manuscript: 'In such a tale one is likely to be misunderstood. After all you must not take it too seriously.' The whole thing is superficial and is but a tale’ (Letters III, p. 354.