B`An unquiet and mysterious country of inextinguishable desires and fears' `The Lagoon' creates and sustains an ironic tension between reality and romance thatpreoccupies all of the twelve stories in this volume. Renouncing the world in favour of his love for the forbidden Diamelen, Arsat elopes with her to a bewitching forest, only to realize he has drawn his brother into mortal danger. Also centred on the hazards of the exotic, `Il Conde' recounts the tale of an elegant Count, overtly engaged in a health-enhancing visit to Italy, his enjoyment of the picturesque disrupted by robbery and the voice of the Neapolitan underworld. Questioning the very nature of the exotic through shifting narrative perspectives, these stories mirror, in form and theme, Conrad's own ambiguous and hybrid status in imperial England. Set in the peripheral zones of the Victorian world, they range in location from London to the Malay archipelago, South America, Poland and Russia and tell of anarchists, Malay warriors, traders of the eastern seas, soldiers and sailors of the Napleonic wars. This edition is the first to reprint these stories as they first appeared in popular magazines of the time. William Atkinson's introduction explores the `double-voiced' nature of Conrad's narratives as well as his ironic treatment of the adventure-romance genre popularized by his contemporaries, Stevenson, Kipling, and Rider Haggard. This book is intended for english literature courses; Conrad courses; courses on imperialism; the general reader.