The thesis seeks to demonstrate that Conrad does not fit at all into the manly-heroic tradition which his work is often approached as belonging to. By tracing the entwining of masculine and homoerotic imagery in his major and minor works, as well as in the often neglected late novels, it is possible to discover ample evidence to suggest that he would be more accurately- if somewhat shockingly for critical tradition placed in the tradition of homosexual literature. Appended to the main body of the thesis is a glossary of homosexual codewords- words that were widely understood to refer to what was then the otherwise unmentionable crime of homosexuality from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This glossary is drawn both from the homosexual prose and poetry of the era, as well as from what evidence we have of wider public usages in contemporary newspapers, court-reports, diaries, letters, etc. At present, there is no recognition of, or collation of, the vast majority of these words in any dictionary of historical or sexual slang.