Reader's Guides provide a comprehensive starting point for any advanced student, giving an overview of the context, criticism and influence of key works. Each guide also offers students fresh critical insights and provides a practical introduction to close reading and to analysing literary language and form. They provide up-to-date, authoritative but accessible guides to the most commonly studied classic texts. Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness (1902), is a key text in the development of modernism and one of the most important literary works of the early twentieth century. This guide provides an invaluable introduction to reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness and includes sections on its contexts, language and style, critical reception and literary and film adaptations, including Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and finally an annotated guide to further reading.