Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
The prequel of Heart of Darkness is entitled Youth and was published in 1898. (Introduction by Hampson.)
Heart of Darkness is largely biographical. Joseph Conrad traveled up the Congo River in 1890 in what was apparently a horrifying journey. And in 1891, he cruised on a British yawl called the Nellie. (source)
Though he wrote Heart of Darkness in English, it is Joseph Conrad’s third language, his first two being Polish and French. (Introduction by Hampson)
Heart of Darkness inspired English poet T.S. Eliot to write his cryptic, modernist poems "The Waste Land" and "The Hollow Men." (source)
Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on Heart of Darkness, set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War—but it was filmed in the Philippines with Filipino actors. Filipino-America writer Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters is set in the Philippines and loosely based on the filming of Apocalypse Now. Her novel looks at the problematic racial politics of an American movie company using Filipino actors to portray African natives in a book written by a nineteenth-century imperialist. (Yeah, our head hurts a little, too.) (source) and (source)
Heart of Darkness was originally published in three parts—like a literary miniseries. (source)