The Shadow-Line, a short novel set at sea, is one of Joseph Conrad's later works, written from February to December 1915. It was serialized in 1916 in New York's Metropolitan Magazine (September–October); in the English Review ; and was published in book form in 1917 in the UK (March) and the United States (April). The novella depicts the development of a young man upon taking a ship's captaincy in the Orient; the title's "shadow line" represents the threshold of the development.