Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (originally Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski)
was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist
autocracy. His parents, ardent Polish patriots, died when
he was a child, following their exile for anti-Russian
activities, and he came under the protection of his
tradition-conscious uncle, Thaddeus Bobrowski, who watched
over him for the next twenty-five years.

In 1874 Bobrowski conceded to his nephew's passionate
desire to go to sea, and Conrad travelled to Marseilles,
where he served in French merchant vessels before joining a
British ship in 1878. In 1886 he obtained British
nationality and his Master's certificate in the British
Merchant Service.

Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to
writing, publishing his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in
1895. The following year he married Jessie George and
eventually settled in Kent, where he produced within
fifteen years such modern classics as Youth, Heart of
Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and
Under Western Eyes. He continued to write until his death
in 1924.

Today Conrad is generally regarded as one of the greatest
writers of fiction in English - his third language. He once
described himself as being concerned `with the ideal value
of things, events and people'; in the Preface to The Nigger
of the `Narcissus' he defined his task as `by the power of
the written word _ before all, to make you see'.