Read4MaxClassics Browse library
Cover of Chance

Classic Fiction

Chance

by Joseph Conrad

The daughter of a banker jailed for fraud spontanously decides to marry a sea captain after a brief encounter.

Read online Download EPUB
First published
1912
Length
138,784 words
Reading time
About 9 hr 39 min
Language
English (UK)

About the book

Flora de Barral is the daughter of a successful banker. When he’s tried and convicted of fraud, her prosperous life turns miserable. While on the brink of suicide, she meets an older sea captain and marries him as a means of escape. Her dramatic life is recounted by several characters, but mainly by Marlow, Conrad’s favorite recurring narrator.

Chance , serialized in 1912 and published as a book the following year, is Conrad’s only novel with a female protagonist. It was also his first commercially successful novel, despite its complex narrative structure.

First published 1912; the Read4Max reading text contains approximately 138,784 words arranged in 19 navigable sections.

About the author

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) is described by Wikidata as Polish-British writer (1857–1924), with citizenship or national association recorded as Russian Empire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom, and Second Polish Republic.

Recorded occupations include writer, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, science fiction writer, and autobiographer. Languages recorded for Joseph Conrad include English and Polish. The structured record associates Joseph Conrad with modernist literature. Wikidata lists The Lagoon, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Amy Foster, and Typhoon among Joseph Conrad's notable works. Open Library identifies Heart of Darkness as a leading work in its author record. Open Library catalogs 5571 works under this author record. The Read4Max catalog currently includes A Personal Record, Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, Chance, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and Nostromo under Joseph Conrad's authorship.

1857–1924

Reading options

  • A complete text with direct section navigation in the browser reader.
  • A downloadable EPUB for phones, tablets, desktop reading apps, and compatible ereaders.
  • Book and contributor metadata are checked against the source edition before indexing.

Themes and ideas

  • Sea stories
  • Psychological fiction
  • Young women
  • Love stories
  • Fathers and daughters
  • Children of prisoners
  • Ship captains' spouses

Table of contents

Open reader
Show all 19 sections
  1. Epigraph
  2. Dedication
  3. Author’s Note
  4. Chance
  5. Part I
  6. I
  7. II
  8. III
  9. IV
  10. V
  11. VI
  12. VII
  13. Part II
  14. I
  15. II
  16. III
  17. IV
  18. V
  19. VI
View the full library