Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

 originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine

Blackwood's Magazine

Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn...

from October 1899 to November 1900

1900 in literature

The year 1900 in literature involved some significant new books and publications, as well as the deaths of several highly prominent writers, including among them the late Irish poet Oscar Wilde and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche....

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An early and primary event is Jim's abandonment of a ship in distress on which he is serving as a mate. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with his past.

In 1998, the Modern Library

Modern Library

The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...

 ranked Lord Jim #85 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Jim (his surname is never disclosed), a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca

Mecca

Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...

 for the hajj

Hajj

The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...

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