Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Berdichev, Poland, then part of the Russian empire. Conrad’s father (a translator of Shakespeare into Polish) exposed him to Western European literature at an early age, including English authors such as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, among others. As a young man Conrad left Poland for a career as a sailor, and in 1886 he also became a British subject. He settled in Britain in 1894, anglicizing his name, devoting himself to writing, and in 1896 marrying an Englishwoman, Jessie George. The couple had two sons, Borys and John. Conrad began his first novel, Almayer’s Folly (1895), while at sea, and his experiences as a sailor provided the basis for several of his best known tales, including the novels The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1898) and Lord Jim (1900), as well as the novella Heart of Darkness (1902; also in Literature and Its Times). With Nostromo (1904), a story of revolution in a South American city, Conrad began a new phase in his career; in his next two novels, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes (1911), he retained the focus on political themes and urban settings begun with Nostromo.
