Joseph Conrad

1857–1924

Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in the Polish lands then ruled by Russia. His parents were exiled for their part in the Polish struggle for freedom, and both had died by the time he was eleven. At sixteen he went to Marseilles to become a sailor.

He spent twenty years at sea, rising to captain in the British merchant navy, and in 1890 took a steamer up the Congo River, a journey that nearly killed him. He settled in England and wrote novels in English, his third language, among them Lord Jim, Nostromo and Heart of Darkness.

Joseph Conrad on the site

Heart of DarknessPublished in 1899 About 3 hours read On a yacht anchored in the Thames at dusk, the sailor Marlow tells his companions how he once took charge of a river steamer in the Congo, sent by a Belgian trading company to bring back its star agent, Mr. Kurtz, from the station far upriver. What he saw on the way, and what he found at the end, changed him. Joseph Conrad based the story on his own journey up the Congo in 1890, and it was published in 1899.

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