Joseph Conrad

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Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (December 3, 1857 – August 3, 1924) was a Polish-born British novelist. Some of his works have been labeled romantic, although Conrad usually tempers romanticism with the conflicting pulls of realism and the moral ambiguity of modern life. For this reason, many critics have placed him as a forerunner of modernism. Many of Conrad's works center around sailors and the sea.

Born Józef Teodor Nałęcz Konrad Korzeniowski, on December 3, 1857 in Berdyczów (Berdychiv), in what is now Ukraine, Conrad was brought up in Russian-occupied Poland. His father, an impoverished aristocrat, writer, and militant fighter, was arrested by the occupying regime for his patriotic activities, and was sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia. Shortly after this, his mother died of tuberculosis in exile, and so did his father four years later despite being allowed to return to Kraków.

Subsequently Conrad was brought up by his uncle, a much more conservative figure than either of his parents. Conrad eventually abandoned his education at the age of 17 to become a seaman in the French merchant navy. He lived an adventurous, buccaneering life—sailing off Marseille and becoming involved in gunrunning and political conspiracy. In 1878, after attempted suicide, Józef took service on a British ship in order to avoid Russian military service. He gained his Master Mariner's certificate, learned English before the age of 21, to finally become a naturalized Briton in 1884. He first arrived in England at the port of Lowestoft, Suffolk, living in London and later near Canterbury, Kent.

His first novel, Almayer's Folly, a story of Malaysia, was written in English and published in 1895. It should be remembered that the lingua franca of educated people at that time was French, which was Conrad's second language, thus it is altogether remarkable that Conrad should write so fluently and effectively in his third language.

His literary work bridges the gap between the classical literary tradition of writers such as Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky and the emergent modernist schools of writing. Interestingly, he despised Dostoevsky, and Russian writers as a rule, only making an exception for Ivan Turgenev. Conrad is now best known for the novella, Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness has been seen, at the time and since, as a scathing attack on Belgian, indeed European, colonialism. Chinua Achebe, however, has argued that Conrad's language and imagery is inescapably racist. Some would claim that these can both be true.


Joseph Conrad died of a heart attack, and was interred in Canterbury Cemetery, Canterbury, England, with three mistakes in his name on the gravestone.


Novels and Novellas

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monument of Conrad in Gdynia

Short Stories

External links

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See also: Joseph Conrad, 1857, 1878, 1884, 1895, 1924, A Personal Record, August 3