Conrad, Joseph, originally Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski (1857-1924) Polish-born British novelist, born in Berdichev, in the Polish Ukraine, now in the USSR. His father was a revolutionary of literary gifts - he translated Victor Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la mer - who was exiled to Vologda in 1862. In 1878 Joseph joined an English merchant ship and was naturalised in 1884 when he gained his certificate as a master. In the ten years that followed, he sailed between Singapore and Borneo, and this gave him an unrivalled background of mysterious creeks and jungle for the tales to follow. There was also an interlude in the Belgian Congo which provided exotic colour for his Heart of Darkness, one of his three finest short stories, the others being Youth and Typhoon. In 1896 he married and settled at Ashford in Kent, where he lived in seclusion for the rest of his days. Conrad’s first novel was Almayer’s Folly (1894), and then followed An Outcast of the Islands (1896), The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911) before Chance (1914) made him famous. It was only then that Lord Jim was recognised as a masterpiece. Perhaps the short story was his true medium - Tales of Unrest (1898), Youth (1902) and Twixt Land and Sea (1912). His semi-autobiographical The Mirror and the Sea and his Personal Record testify to his high artistic aims. He also wrote Victory (1919), but his later works, The Arrow of Gold (1919) and The Rescue (1920), owed their popularity largely to his earlier work.

With acknowledgements to Chambers Biographical Dictionary.

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