Reading Heart of Darkness

 It's always interesting (and fun) to look at the covers of different books.  Above is a cover of the 2002 edition by Hesperus Press, a British publisher. 

In the same year, Oxford University Press published an edition of Heart of Darkness (and other tales by Conrad) with this cover.  Its editor is Professor Cedric Watts of the University of Sussex.  My professor for the 18th & 19th century novel tended to prefer Oxford UP's editions. 

This edition is from Penguin and, as you might guess from the words in the orange border, dates from the turn of the century (20th to 21st).  Penguin has made available a plethora of great novels in relatively inexpensive and durable paperback.  The editor of this version is D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke, a professor from a university in Sri Lanka.

I like this image that appears to be a cover of an Ipod version.



Now I'd like to look for some older editions or possibly editions in other languages.

Now I've hit the jackpot!  Here is a picture of a cover from a Signet edition from the mid-20th century.  Unfortunately, the author of the web site where I found this picture did not include the date of the edition, but I would guess that this cover may be from the 1950s.  Although the picture appears to be aimed towards a more popular audience, the author of the introduction is Alfred J. Guerard, a noted scholar of Conrad's work and an early psychoanalytic critic.  Hmmm...things were different in the old days!


I'll close with an image of an English-language edition sold at Amazon Japan's site and an image of the edition that I used to own!  Honestly, the picture right above looks more like a painting by Constable (a British painter) than a picture of the Congo!

What do these covers have in common?  How are they different?  Do any seem like they might be influenced by Apocalypse Now?  Which may have been influenced by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe's reading of Conrad's novel? (See below for link.)

http://www.cis.vt.edu/modernworld/d/Achebe.html