Joseph Conrad
(1857–1924)

To become one of the most distinguished novelists of one's age would be accomplishment enough for most writers. To do so in a language other than one's own native tongue, as Joseph Conrad did, is an achievement almost without parallel.

Born in Poland to a scholarly father, Josef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeiniwski was orphaned at the age of ten. He fled his Russian-occupied homeland to France and England when he was 16, and spent the next dozen years as an apprentice seaman. The voyages that he made to exotic corners of the globe—Asia, Africa, and South America—were later put to use as the vivid settings for much of his fiction. In 1886, he became a ship's captain and an English citizen.

It was not until he was 38 that Conrad published his first novel, Almayer's Folly. That year, 1885, also marked his marriage and his retirement from the sea. In the next few years, Conrad so far overcame the difficulties of writing in an adopted tongue (English was actually his third language; Polish and Russian were his first and second) that he became one of the masters of Modernist prose. In 1897 he published his first important novel, The Nigger of the Narcissus, and within the next seven years produced three masterpieces: Lord Jim (1900), Youth—a collection of shorter pieces that includes his well-known "Heart of Darkness" (1902)—and the ambitious Nostromo (1904).

After a brief collaboration with novelist Ford Madox Ford, Conrad came out with two novels about revolutionaries, The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911). Remaining active through the end of his life, he was at work on Suspense, an ambitious historical novel in the classic tradition, when he died in 1924.

Conrad often used the tradition of the sea yarn to create what, on the surface, were thrilling adventure tales. His serious thematic concerns, however, are readily apparent. Almost invariably, the notion of "voyage" in a Conrad novel translates to a voyage of self-discovery. The menacing jungles and vast oceans that confront his characters become metaphors for his hidden depths of the self; the requirement for loyalty among crew members of a ship, often unmet, symbolizes the frailty of human relationships in a world filled with deception, corruption, and betrayal.

A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  I  |  J  |  K  |  L  |  M
N  |  O  |  P  |  Q  |  R  |  S  |  T  |  U  |  V  |  W  |  X  |  Y  |  Z