Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Amy Foster: Classic Short Story
    Amy Foster: Classic Short Story
    Amy Foster: Classic Short Story
    Ebook44 pages53 minutes

    Amy Foster: Classic Short Story

    By Joseph Conrad

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A poor emigrant from Central Europe sailing from Hamburg to America is shipwrecked off the coast of England. The residents of nearby villages, at first unaware of the sinking, and hence of the possibility of survivors, regard him as a dangerous tramp and madman. He speaks no English; his strange foreign language frightens them, and they offer him no assistance.Eventually "Yanko Goorall" (as rendered in English spelling) is given shelter and employment by an eccentric old local, Mr. Swaffer. Yanko learns a little English. He explains that his given name Yanko means "little John" and that he was a mountaineer (a resident of a mountain area a Goorall), hence his surname. The story's narrator reveals that Yanko hailed from the Carpathian Mountains.Yanko falls in love with Amy Foster, a servant girl who has shown him some kindness. To the community's disapproval, they marry. The couple live in a cottage given to Yanko by Swaffer for having saved his granddaughter's life. Yanko and Amy have a son whom Amy calls Johnny (after Little John). Amy, a simple woman, is troubled by Yanko's behavior, particularly his trying to teach their son to pray with him in his "disturbing" language.Several months later Yanko falls severely ill and, suffering from a fever, begins raving in his native language. Amy, frightened, takes their child and flees for her life. Next morning Yanko dies of heart failure. It transpires that he had simply been asking in his native language for water.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDiamond Book Publishing
    Release dateJul 14, 2020
    ISBN9788835864523
    Amy Foster: Classic Short Story
    Author

    Joseph Conrad

    Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature.

    Read more from Joseph Conrad

    Related to Amy Foster

    Titles in the series (10)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      J.K. Rowling

      Nov 18, 2021

      J.K. Rowling
      6 min read

    • Article

      Sir Lancelot's Quest

      Mar 4, 2020

      Sir Lancelot's Quest
      4 min read

    • Article

      At Home With The Romans

      Mar 2, 2020

      At Home With The Romans
      1 min read

    • Article

      Pick Of The Crop: October’s 10 Best Books To Savor In Autumn

      Oct 20, 2021

      Spend the month reading new books by John le Carré, Jonathan Franzen, Amor Towles, and Mary Beard.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Madeleine L’Engle’s Early Short Stories Presage ‘A Wrinkle In Time’

      Apr 17, 2020

      A reviewer reflects on reading “The Moment of Tenderness,” a collection of short stories, and then returning to the 1963 novel she loved growing up.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Man In The Red Bandanna: A Story Of Heroism On 9/11

      Sep 11, 2017

      On Sept. 11, 2001, one young man led several people down the stairs to safety after a plane hit the south tower of the World Trade Center.

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘Traitors Must Die’

      Jul 14, 2020

      ‘Traitors Must Die’
      9 min read

    • Article

      Kira’s PIZZA

      Mar 1, 2022

      Kira’s PIZZA
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lark Rise ascending

      Sep 20, 2023

      Lark Rise ascending
      6 min read

    • Article

      Wonder Women

      Nov 5, 2019

      Wonder Women
      7 min read

    • Article

      An Quick Look at the Glowforge Plus

      Dec 14, 2021

      For many years, woodworkers marveled at personalization of handcrafted goods available from large companies. In the past decade, the consumer laser has exploded on the scene, allowing access to this technology at an affordable cost. Consumer lasers a

      4 min read

    • Article

      Rome After Dark

      Mar 2, 2020

      Rome After Dark
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Magic Of The Moors

      May 27, 2020

      The Magic Of The Moors
      5 min read

    • Article

      Greatest tv Westerns

      Jul 19, 2022

      Greatest tv Westerns
      13 min read

    • Article

      Richard The Radical

      Nov 26, 2020

      Richard The Radical
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Gun Most Murderous

      May 15, 2020

      A Gun Most Murderous
      8 min read

    • Article

      Crusade Leaders

      Jun 20, 2019

      Crusade Leaders
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Amy Foster

    4/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Amy Foster - Joseph Conrad

      AMY FOSTER

      Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. The high ground rising abruptly behind the red roofs of the little town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from the seas, and occasionally a big ship, windbound or through stress of weather, makes use of the anchoring ground a mile and a half due north from you as you stand at the back door of the Ship Inn in Brenzett. A dilapidated windmill near by lifting its shattered arms from a mound no loftier than a rubbish heap, and a Martello tower squatting at the water’s edge half a mile to the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to the skippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for the patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by an irregular oval of dots enclosing several figures six, with a tiny anchor engraved among them, and the legend mud and shells over all.

      The brow of the upland overtops the square tower of the Colebrook Church. The slope is green and looped by a white road. Ascending along this road, you open a valley broad and shallow, a wide green trough of pastures and hedges merging inland into a vista of purple tints and flowing lines closing the view.

      In this valley down to Brenzett and Colebrook and up to Darnford, the market town fourteen miles away, lies the practice of my friend Kennedy. He had begun life as surgeon in the Navy, and afterwards had been the companion of a famous traveller, in the days when there were continents with unexplored interiors. His papers on the fauna and flora made him known to scientific societies. And now he had come to a country practice—from choice. The penetrating power of his mind, acting like a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligence is of a scientific order, of an investigating habit, and of that unappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a general truth in every mystery.

      A good many years ago now, on my return from abroad, he invited me to stay with him. I came readily enough, and as he could not neglect his patients to keep me company, he took me on his rounds—thirty miles or so of an afternoon, sometimes. I waited for him on the roads; the horse reached after the leafy twigs, and, sitting in the dogcart, I could hear Kennedy’s laugh through the half-open door left open of some cottage. He had a big, hearty laugh that would have fitted a man twice his size, a brisk manner, a bronzed face, and a pair of grey, profoundly attentive eyes. He had the talent of making people talk to him freely, and an inexhaustible patience in listening to their tales.

      One day, as we trotted out of a large village into a shady bit of road, I saw on our left hand a low, black cottage, with diamond panes in the windows, a creeper on the end wall, a roof of shingle, and some roses climbing on the rickety trellis-work of the tiny porch. Kennedy pulled up to a walk. A woman, in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1