SOURCE: "Achievement without Success, III," in Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960, pp. 346-78.

Baines was an English editor and critic. In the following excerpt from his Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography, which has been acclaimed as the definitive study of Conrad, he argues that the text of "The Secret Sharer" does not support the often-proposed interpretation of Leggatt as a symbol for the narrator's unconscious desires.

Conrad wrote 'The Secret Sharer' some time during the end of November and early December [1909]—exceptionally quick for him. It is undoubtedly one of his best short stories, but certain critics, notably Albert Guerard [in Conrad the Novelist, 1958] and Douglas Hewitt [in Conrad: A Reassessment, 1952], have claimed for it a position as a key story in Conrad's work and attributed to it a significance which I do not believe that it can hold. It is intensely dramatic but, on...