Conrad's principal literary precedent for the elaborately contrived swindles is found in the novels of Dickens, especially in his depiction of the AngloBengalee fraud of Tigg Montagne in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844) and in some segments of Little Dorritt (18551857) and Our Mutual Friend (18641866) as they relate to wealth. The many coincidences or chances in the novel share in the novelistic traditions that make virtues of chance meetings; again Dickens comes to mind as one who perfected the technique. Indeed Chance closely resembles the plot of a Dickens novel; Conrad's novel contains a damsel in distress who is idealized and sentimentalized, and a parent who is the victim of his own manias and whose burden the daughter must bear.

Indeed de Barral has much in common with Nell's grandfather in The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841). And, surprisingly for Conrad's readers, Chance has no tragic ending but the promise...