Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was a Polish-born British novelist who wrote in English, his third language, after twenty years at sea. Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Nostromo, marked by the sea, empire and moral solitude, made him one of the masters of the modern novel.
Works
Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim
An exile's son
Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was born on 3 December 1857 in Berdychiv, in today's Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, to a Polish family. His father, a poet and patriot, was exiled to northern Russia with his wife and son for his political activities.
His mother died when he was seven and his father when he was eleven. He was brought up by an uncle in Kraków, and at sixteen he left for Marseilles to go to sea.
Twenty years at sea
Conrad sailed on French ships, then joined the British merchant navy in 1878, learning English on board. He rose to become a master mariner and a British subject, and sailed to Australia, the East Indies and Bangkok.
In 1890 he took command of a river steamer in the Congo Free State, then the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium. What he saw of the exploitation of the country, and the illness he brought back, shaped Heart of Darkness.
The writer
He left the sea in 1894 and published his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. Settled in Kent with his English wife Jessie, he wrote slowly and in constant money trouble: The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes.
Success came late, with Chance in 1913. Conrad declined a knighthood in 1924 and died in Kent in August of that year. His influence on novelists, from Virginia Woolf to Graham Greene, has been immense.
Anecdotes
Writing in his third language
Conrad spoke Polish and French before he learned English, which he only began to study in his twenties. He said that if he had not written in English he would not have written at all.
A ship's command he never forgot
His only command of a sea-going ship, the barque Otago in 1888, inspired several of his stories, among them The Secret Sharer and The Shadow-Line.
Frequently asked questions
Was Joseph Conrad English?
He became a British subject in 1886, but he was born to Polish parents in the Russian Empire, and his native language was Polish.
What is Heart of Darkness about?
A sailor, Marlow, tells of his voyage up the Congo River to find Kurtz, an ivory agent who has become a tyrant among the people of the region.
What are Conrad's main novels?
Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911) and Victory (1915), along with the novella Heart of Darkness.