Conrad, Joseph

Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924), Polish-born British novelist, considered to be among the great modern English writers, whose work explores the vulnerability and moral instability at the heart of human lives.

Conrad, whose original name was Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, was born near Berdichev, Poland (now in Ukraine), the son of a Polish nobleman who was also a political journalist and anarchist. From his father the boy acquired a love of literature, including romantic tales of the sea. He was orphaned at the age of 12, and when he was 16 years old he left Russian-occupied Poland and made his way to Marseilles, France. For the next four years he worked on French ships, ran guns for the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, and became involved in a love affair that ended in his attempted suicide. He then entered the British merchant service, becoming a master mariner and a naturalized British subject in 1886; a few years later he changed his name to sound more English. For the next decade he travelled widely, mostly in Eastern waters. Conrad’s experiences, especially in the Malay Archipelago and on the Congo River in 1890, are reflected in his writing, which was done in English, his fourth language (after Russian, Polish, and French). Conrad published his first novel and married Jessie George in 1895.

Conrad produced 13 novels, 2 volumes of memoirs, and 28 short stories. Writing, however, was not easy or painless for him, as is shown by his comment regarding the completion of the novel Nostromo (1904), a tale of stolen silver, desire, and guilt, which many critics regard as his masterpiece: “an achievement upon which my friends may congratulate me as upon recovery from a dangerous illness”. In addition to the strain of writing, he endured suffering caused by gout, as well as his wife’s crippling illness, and the meagre income he received from his work.

Conrad’s life at sea and in foreign ports furnished the background for much of his writing, but his primary theme was the human condition and the individual’s struggle with good and evil. Often his narrator is a retired master mariner, possibly Conrad’s alter ego, such that some of his novels are considered autobiographical; one example is his first published work, Almayer’s Folly (1895).

One of Conrad’s best-known novels is Lord Jim (1900), in which he explored the conception of personal honour through the actions and emotions of a man who spends his life trying to atone for an act of cowardice he committed as a young officer during a shipwreck in the East. Among his other works are The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), focused on a black sailor; The Secret Agent (1907), concerning anarchists in London; Under Western Eyes (1911), set in repressive 19th-century Russia; Victory (1915), set in the South Seas; and the novella Heart of Darkness (1902). Heart of Darkness is one of Conrad’s best-known stories and reveals the terrifying depths of human corruptibility. In most of Conrad’s writings, his outlook is bleak. He writes in a rich, vivid prose style with an innovative narrative technique that makes skilful use of breaks in linear chronology. His character development is powerful and compelling.

Conrad died at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, in 1924. He was a major influence on modern fiction and, indeed, may be counted as one of the first English Modernists. His work brought him recognition from leading contemporaries such as Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, Ford Madox Ford, Stephen Crane, and Henry James.