Like many "English" writers, Joseph Conrad was not born in Great Britain. He was born in Berdiczew,

Polodolia, Poland, on 3 December (or maybe 6 December) 1857. His original name was Jozef Teodor

Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski.

    His father, Apollonius Nalecz, a writer and political activist, was arrested and imprisoned in 1862,

when Joseph Conrad was still a very young child. The family was deported (Conrad later described it as

being "condemned to deportation") to northern Russia. Conrad's mother, Evelina (Bobrowski)

Korzeniowski, died of tuberculosis in Russia in April 1865. In December 1867, around Conrad's tenth

birthday, his father also dying of tuberculosis, they returned to Poland. He was sent to school and came

home every night to the house he and his father shared in Cracow. Conrad beautifully described this part

of his life many years later:

    I don't know what would have become of me if I had not been a reading boy. My prep finished I

would have had nothing to do but sit and watch the awful stillness of ... [my father's] sick room flow out

through the closed door and coldly enfold my sacred heart. I suppose that in a futile, childish way I would

have gone crazy. But I was a reading boy. There were many books about, lying on consoles, on tables,

and even on the floor, for we had not had time to settle down. I read! What did I not read! Sometimes the

elder nun, gliding up and casting a mistrustful look on the open pages, would lay her hand lightly on my

head and suggest in a doubtful whisper, "Perhaps it is not very good for you to read these books." I would

raise my eyes to her face mutely, and with a vague gesture of giving it up she would glide away. Later in

the evening, but not always, I would be permitted to tiptoe into the sick room to say good-night to the

figure prone on the bed, which often could not acknowledge my presence but by a slow movement of the

eyes, put my lips dutifully to the nerveless hand lying on the coverlet, and tiptoe out again. Then I would

go to bed, in a room at the end of the corridor, and often, not always, cry myself into a good sound sleep.

(Jean-Aubry)

    His father died in May 1869, and Joseph Conrad's uncle and grandmother became his guardians. In

1874, when Conrad was still 15, he moved to Marseilles, France, where many Polish expatriates gathered.

    Instead of adopting the life the intellectual expatriate, however, he joined the French Merchant Marine

and travelled to Martinique and the West Indies. Between 1878 and 1890 (ages 19-32 or so), Conrad

worked for the British Merchant Service, travelling to many exotic locations including Africa, Australia,

India, and the far East.

    In 1885 the Congo became a free country, independent of its prior colonizer. By 1889, when Conrad

decided to captain a steamboat up the Congo River, the new country was a magnet for capitalists anxious

to exploit its natural resources and population for profit. His experience, some of which made the basis of

Heart of Darkness, echoed throughout the rest of his life. Not only did it change him from being "a mere

animal," which is how he characterized himself before his experience in the Congo, to something more

human and aware, but it undergirded his scepticism (some might say "pessimism") and damaged his health

permanently.

    He became a British subject on 19 August 1886 and left the British Merchant Service in January 1894,

when he began his career as a professional writer. For his first published work, Almayer's Folly, 1895,

Conrad adopted the name we know him by now.

    He married Jessie George 24 March 1896, and they had two sons, Borys and John Alexander. He died

of a heart attack at his home in Bishopsbourne, Kent, England, and he was buried in Canterbury,

England.

    He wrote 29 books, including nearly 25 novels and collections of short stories and novellas, and 5

nonfiction works.