A major influence on Conrad's mature fiction is the realistic fiction of Gustav Flaubert, which exhibits a nearly flawless artistry of style and structure, and which usually pits a romantic dreamer or idealist against the intractable nature of reality. In his own way, Conrad's tragic count is a victim of romantic illusions, although these are the moderate and restrained illusions of the leisure class at the end of the nineteenth century. Again, too, the short fiction of Guy de Maupassant, with its ability to show how one or two incidents can change the course of a life is one of the major influences on Conrad's short realistic fiction.

Another possible influence is the shorter fiction of Henry James, whose work Conrad admired. The technique of using an uninvolved but observant narrator to explore another character's life and moral weaknesses is employed frequently in James's shorter fiction...