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A comprehensive biography of Joseph Conrad, a Polish-British novelist and story writer who is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Learn about his life, works, style, influences, and legacy.
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- Early years
- Life at sea
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Joseph Conrad’s original name was Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. He adopted the pen name Joseph Conrad in April 1895 with the publication of his novel Almayer’s Folly.
What was Joseph Conrad’s family like?
Joseph Conrad’s father, Apollo Nalęcz Korzeniowski, was a poet and an ardent Polish patriot who participated in a Polish insurrection against Russian rule. After both his parents died from tuberculosis, Conrad was put under the care of his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, a lawyer.
What were Joseph Conrad’s jobs?
Joseph Conrad was an English novelist and short-story writer of Polish descent who is regarded as one of the greatest English novelists. Before his writing career, he worked on the sea, rising from apprentice to captain. He mined his maritime experiences for use in his fiction.
What is Joseph Conrad known for?
Conrad’s father, Apollo Nalęcz Korzeniowski, a poet and an ardent Polish patriot, was one of the organizers of the committee that went on in 1863 to direct the Polish insurrection against Russian rule. He was arrested in late 1861 and was sent into exile at Vologda in northern Russia. His wife and four-year-old son followed him there, and the harsh...
Bobrowski made him an allowance of 2,000 francs a year and put him in touch with a merchant named Delestang, in whose ships Conrad sailed in the French merchant service. His first voyage, on the Mont-Blanc to Martinique, was as a passenger; on its next voyage he sailed as an apprentice. In July 1876 he again sailed to the West Indies, as a steward on the Saint-Antoine. On this voyage Conrad seems to have taken part in some unlawful enterprise, probably gunrunning, and to have sailed along the coast of Venezuela, memories of which were to find a place in Nostromo. The first mate of the vessel, a Corsican named Dominic Cervoni, was the model for the hero of that novel and was to play a picturesque role in Conrad’s life and work.
Conrad became heavily enmeshed in debt upon returning to Marseille and apparently unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide. As a sailor in the French merchant navy he was liable to conscription when he came of age, so after his recovery he signed on in April 1878 as a deckhand on a British freighter bound for Constantinople with a cargo of coal. After the return journey his ship landed him at Lowestoft, England, in June 1878. It was Conrad’s first English landfall, and he spoke only a few words of the language of which he was to become a recognized master. Conrad remained in England, and in the following October he shipped as an ordinary seaman aboard a wool clipper on the London–Sydney run.
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Conrad was to serve 16 years in the British merchant navy. In June 1880 he passed his examination as second mate, and in April 1881 he joined the Palestine, a bark of 425 tons. This move proved to be an important event in his life; it took him to the Far East for the first time, and it was also a continuously troubled voyage, which provided him with literary material that he would use later. Beset by gales, accidentally rammed by a steamer, and deserted by a sizable portion of her crew, the Palestine nevertheless had made it as far as the East Indies when her cargo of coal caught fire and the crew had to take to the lifeboats; Conrad’s initial landing in the East, on an island off Sumatra, took place only after a 13 1/2-hour voyage in an open boat. In 1898 Conrad published his account of his experiences on the Palestine, with only slight alterations, as the short story “Youth,” a remarkable tale of a young officer’s first command.
He returned to London by passenger steamer, and in September 1883 he shipped as mate on the Riversdale, leaving her at Madras to join the Narcissus at Bombay. This voyage gave him material for his novel The Nigger of the “Narcissus,” the story of an egocentric black sailor’s deterioration and death aboard ship. At about this time Conrad began writing his earliest known letters in the English language. In between subsequent voyages Conrad studied for his first mate’s certificate, and in 1886 two notable events occurred: he became a British subject in August, and three months later he obtained his master mariner’s certificate.
Learn about the life and works of Joseph Conrad, a Polish-born English novelist and short-story writer of modernism. Explore his themes of adventure, morality, and the sea in novels such as Lord Jim, Nostromo, and Heart of Darkness.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Apr 2, 2014 · Joseph Conrad was an author who is remembered for novels like 'Heart of Darkness,' which drew on his experience as a mariner and addressed profound themes of nature and...
Jul 30, 2024 · Learn about the life and writing career of Joseph Conrad, a Polish-born British novelist who explored themes of morality, adventure, and imperialism in his works. Find out how his Congo experience influenced his famous story "Heart of Darkness" and how he became a literary master of the sea and the tropics.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Apr 6, 2019 · Learn about the life and achievements of Joseph Conrad, one of the greatest English-language novelists of all time. Explore his early years in the merchant marine, his classic novels such as Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, and his literary friendships and awards.
Learn about Joseph Conrad, a Polish-born English novelist who wrote Heart of Darkness and other classics of colonial fiction. Browse his books, ratings, reviews, and similar authors on Goodreads.
Jul 29, 2024 · July 29, 2024. Joseph Conrad in 1916 (Alvin Langdon Coburn/Wikimedia Commons) Utter it softly, but with a few rare exceptions the moral arbiters of our age have still failed to come for that master of realist storytelling tinged with philosophical digression, Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), who died one hundred years ago this August. It may be ...
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