"Begun as a short story in October 1921, two months before Conrad's sixty-fourth birthday, The Rover (1923) turned out to be the writer's last completed novel. After a slow beginning plagued by bouts of ill-health, Conrad discovered, as had happened several times throughout his career, that his subject invited more expansive treatment. The short story about an ageing French seaman returning 'home' after a lifetime of adventure and vicissitude slowly evolved into a short novel, and then into a full-length one. Once Conrad got into his stride, he completed it rapidly, by dictation, between January and mid-July 1922. For it, he laid aside his work in hand, Suspense (1925), with which he was already encountering difficulties and which would remain unfinished upon his death. Escaping a troubled work that had been on his desk for some time in favour of a much smaller canvas must have had immediate appeal. It also promised a consolidation of effort: the new story draws upon roughly the same historical epoch as Suspense - the French Revolution and Napoleonic periods - eras that Conrad had read about widely and had already mined for his short stories 'The Duel' (1908) and 'The Warrior's Soul' (1917)"--