Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad, born Tedor Josef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, was born December 3, 1857 in a Russian-ruled province of Poland. His parents’ involvement in the Polish independence movement had them kicked out of Northern Russia in 1863. After his parents’ deaths, he moved in with relatives where he was often ill and received little schooling.

At sixteen years of age, Conrad decided to become a seaman and he joined the British merchant marines in 1878. His lack of speaking the English language did not discourage him. During his ten years of service, Conrad became a British citizen, traveled the western continents, developed into a Captain and learned the English language.

Health problems caused his early retirement of the British merchant marines. In 1894, he started his career as a writer, using his seaman and sailing experience to write. In 1895, Conrad’s first novel, Almayer’s Folly, was published, with some of the book being written in the service.

One year after his first novel, on March 24, 1896, Conrad married Jessie George. They had two children, Alfred Borys and John Alexander. In Kent, England, 1924, Joseph Conrad suffered a heart attack and died.

For the rest of his writing career, Conrad would have difficulty being a writer. He found it difficult to write in the English language: he thought it was a slow and unbearable torment. His novel Chance was his first financial success. His other novels and short stories that were published in the first ten years of the twentieth century are thought of as his most important works.

Throughout his career, Conrad examined the ridiculousness of living by a traditional code of conduct: his novels suggest that the complication of the human spirit allows neither absolute loyalty to any ideal nor even to one’s conscience. It is presented in all of his novels that failure is a fact of human existence. The novel Nostromo, which deals mainly with revolution, politics and financial manipulation, is best at portraying failure. This novel is widely recognized as Conrad’s most ambitious novel.

The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale begins with Mr. Verlocs being summoned to a certain foreign embassy. Strolling down the street he did not look like the agent provocateur he was meant to be. He owned an ambiguous little shop where his family lived close by. He often entertained anarchists from London that he had to keep and eye on and hid his actual occupation.