There is considerable disagreement about the value of Conrad's rhetorical exoticism and pyrrhonistic conservativism.
Born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Conrad was the only child of ardent Polish nationalists in the mid-nineteenth-century Russian empire. His parents were of impoverished landed-gentry background and romantic outlook. Besides rather unsuccessfully managing other people's estates, his father was a literary man (a minor conventional poet and translator). Conrad's parents were harshly exiled to Northern Russia in May 1862 for rebellious political activities preliminary to the Polish nationalist uprising of 1863. His mother died when he was seven, his father when he was eleven. Exile and the related orphaning appear to have had traumatic effects on the young Conrad.
Supported and raised by various relatives (most important, by a maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, a prosperous lawyer who nagged his nephew but also indulged him and continued to provide financial aid until Conrad was in his thirties), he had a sickly childhood and irregular schooling in Russian exile, then in Polish Russia, and then in the Polish area of Austria. Information on Conrad's childhood and youth is limited--unlike many authors he never wrote directly about his early years.
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