The Inn of the Two Witches

"The Inn of the Two Witches" is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad, first published in The Pall Mall Magazine in March 1913. The story was collected in Within the Tides (1915) published by J. M. Dent and Sons.Graver, 1969 p. 201: Appendix

Plot

The story is set during the Spanish Peninsular War, a military theater of the Napoleonic Wars. A British naval officer goes in search of his henchman who has disappeared. Spending the night at an isolated inn, the officer narrowly escapes death. The four-poster bed he sleeps in is an ingenious device fitted with a descending canopy that serves to suffocate its slumbering victims. He narrowly escapes the fate of his servant.Baines, 1960 p. 390: Plot summaryGraver, 1969 p. 171, footnote: Plot summary, "...an anecdote about a British soldier who is nearly murdered in a huge bed with a false canopy that can be manipulated to suffocate its victims."

Critical assessment

Biographer Jocelyn Baines provides no analysis of "The Inn of the Two Witches", merely describing it as "a very un-typical potboiler" and "a story more suitable for boys than for adults."Baines, 1960 p. 390: Literary critic Laurence Graver, after providing a thumbnail sketch of the story, adds that the work "does not require discussion."Graver, 1969 p. 171, footnote

Graver offers these remarks concerning Conrad's final efforts as a writer of short fiction:

Footnotes

Sources Baines, Jocelyn. 1960. Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. Graver, Laurence. 1969. Conrad's Short Fiction. University of California Press, Berkeley, California.