10 Novellas

One of my sons famously thought novella was a posh word for a novel. It just refers to a short novel - about 150 pages or less. Here is a list of ten. These are ones I have actually read.

1. Bartleby the Scrivener Herman Melville 1853
2. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson 1885
3. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899
4. Ethan Frome Edith Wharton 1911
5. Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck 1937
6. Animal Farm George Orwell 1945
7. The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952
8. Breakfast at Tiffany's Truman Capote 1958
9. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Alexander Solzhenitsyn 1962
10. A Month in the Country J L Carr 1960

Novelists 37 Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 – 1924) Born in Russia and dying in England, Conrad was a Polish author who wrote in English. Granted British nationality in 1886, he always considered himself a Pole. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent). He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe. He was a master prose stylist who they say brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. His modernist style influenced many. Films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his An Outcast of the Islands, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, The Duel, Victory, etc, etc. I have only read the novella Heart of darkness I must confess.