Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). .
The famous Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad (Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski) was born in Ukraine in the Russian Empire to a Polish szlachta landowning family, well-known in Polish revolutionary, anti-imperialist circles. His father, Apollo Korzeniowski, was a poet and translator who introduced Conrad, 'a reading boy', to Polish, French and English literature., Coming to Britain , At the age of four Conrad was exiled with his parents to Russia, for their part in organising the failed 1861 insurrection. Conrad's mother Ewa Bobrowska died in exile when he was seven; his father's death, leaving Conrad an orphan at the age of eleven, was the occasion of a huge patriotic demonstration in Cracow. Now in the care of his uncle, at the aged of sixteen Conrad took the momentous step of leaving Poland for Marseilles, avoiding service in the Russian army, and shortly shipped aboard the Mont-Blanc, sailing for Martinique. He did not return to Poland for sixteen years., Conrad first stepped shoe in Britain at Lowestoft on 10 June 1878, part of the unique journey that led to literary fame as 'Joseph Conrad' and to writing entirely in a language that he did not begin to speak with any fluency until he was twenty. In his nineteen years at sea Conrad served on eighteen ships, both sail and steam, and visited every part of the world other than North America. He worked his way up from steward to captain (his single command was the Otago, from Bangkok to Sydney and Mauritius in 1888), ending with two voyages to Australia as first mate on the beautiful, fast clipper ship the Torrens., Becoming a British subject in 1886, Conrad eventually settled in Kent, at 'The Pent', near Postling; where he wrote several of his most famous works, including Lord Jim (set in Malaysia) and 'Heart of Darkness' (set in what was then the Belgian Congo); and later at 'Oswalds' in Bishopsbourne. By this time he had written the political novels, Nostromo (set in South America), The Secret Agent (set in London), and Under Western Eyes (set in St Petersburg and Genera). Conrad brought a wider world into the English novel; as George Orwell said, he had 'a grown-upness and political understanding' beyond any British writer of his day. By the time of his death in 1924, he was recognised as one of the great Modernist writers of English literature.