Customer Reviews

The Mirror of the Sea and A Personal Record (World's Classics)

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For anyone with a love of sailing and the sea this is a wonderful book, Joseph Conrad's prose when he is at his best is pure poetry. "The tall masts are the pillars supporting the balanced planes that, motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship's motive-power, as it were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man; and it is the ship's tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white glory, that incline themselves before the anger of the clouded heaven." I have been fortunate enough to have been the master of a square rigged ship, though nothing like that which Conrad had sailed upon as the sailing ship era was coming to a close, and for me he truly captures something magical about this long gone era, its ships and men and the moods of the oceans upon which they sailed.