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IT IS SOBERING to learn how tense and unhappy Conrad was as he worked at Under Western Eyes, for him the most excruciating of his novels. Mental and physical breakdown in January 1910 may have been provoked by a quarrel with his faithful agent, J. B. Pinker, who had been financing the Conrad family.
It was not until the publication of the novel Chance in 1913 that Conrad's financial problems began to be solved. The book sold heavily throughout 1914 and finally made the novelist both prosperous and famous. I cannot say that I find Chance very readable, but it is gratifying that he at last found his public.