This Norton Critical Edition includes:

- A newly edited text based on the first English book edition (1902), the last version to which Conrad is known to have actively contributed. "Textual History and Editing Principles" provides an overview of the textual controversies and ambiguities perpetually surrounding Heart of Darkness.

- Background and source materials on colonialism and the Congo, nineteenth-century attitudes toward race, Conrad in the Congo, and Conrad on art and literature.

- Fifteen illustrations.

- Seven contemporary responses to the novella along with eighteen essays in criticism-ten of them new to the Fifth Edition,

including an entirely new subsection on film adaptations of Heart of Darkness.

- A Chronology and an updated Selected Bibliography.