![\"Portraif](\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2014\/05\/405px-Joseph_Conrad.png\")
<\/a> <\/a> <\/a>Figure 1: Joseph Conrad[\/caption]\r\n\r\nJoseph Conrad was born in Berdyczow, which, at the time of his birth, on December 3, 1857, was a city in Ukraine. His birth name was Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, anglicized years later when he became a British citizen. Before one of those border realignments that regularly occur in that part of the world, Berdyczow had been a part of the Kingdom of Poland.\u00a0The distinction is important because Polish nationalism shaped Conrad\u2019s early years.\u00a0His parents were Polish nobility, and Conrad\u2019s father, in addition to working as a writer and a translator, was a political activist, whose goal was to free Poland from Russian domination.\u00a0 For this, he was arrested and his family exiled to Vologda.\u00a0Within seven years, both of Conrad\u2019s parents had died of tuberculosis and he was sent to live with his mother\u2019s brother, his Uncle Tadeusz, in Krakow.\r\n\r\nDetermined to be a sailor, Conrad left home at 16 and moved to Marseilles, France, where he began his apprenticeship, working entry-level positions on several merchant ships.\u00a0His career floundered, however, when he learned that to continue this line of work he needed the permission from the Russian consul, who was more likely to conscript Conrad into the Russian army than grant permission.\u00a0Moreover, Conrad had gambling debts he could not pay.\u00a0In despair, he wounded himself in the chest in a half-hearted suicide attempt, which prompted his uncle to settle Conrad\u2019s debts and to help him relocate to England.\u00a0For the next 16 years, Conrad worked in the British mercantile marine, rising in rank to master mariner.\u00a0In 1886, at the age of 29, he became a British citizen.\r\n\r\nIn 1890, Conrad captained a steamer up the Congo River, an adventure that\u00a0inspired Heart of Darkness<\/i>.\u00a0As a Pole whose father was a political activist fighting to rebuild a nation ruthlessly conquered by other European powers, Conrad was sensitive to the exploitation and disruption that occurs when one culture will use any means, including aggressive military action, to impose its will upon another.\u00a0The motive is often the theft of natural resources, such as oil, precious metals, or forests.\u00a0In Heart of Darkness<\/i>, it is ivory, valuable in Europe at the time for the manufacture of piano keys, elaborate chess pieces, jewelry, billiard balls, toiletry items, and ornaments of various kinds. Lured by the promise of wealth, adventurers and fortune hunters, with the blessing of Belgium\u2019s King Leopold, who took his cut, rushed to the Congo ready and eager to decimate the elephant population and harvest its ivory. Heart of Darkness<\/i> was first published in three installments in 1899 in Blackwoods Magazine<\/i>.\u00a0In 1902, it was one of the stories in Conrad\u2019s book, Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories<\/i>.\u00a0It is among Conrad\u2019s best-known works, and one of the great novellas in the English language.\r\n\r\nBy 1894, with the help of an inheritance from his uncle, Conrad\u2019s transition from sailor to writer was complete.\u00a0He married, settled on a farm in Kent, and became a prolific writer, the author of some of the great works\u00a0of the 20th century: Lord Jim<\/i> (1899), Typhoon<\/i> (1902), Nostromo<\/i> (1904), The Secret Agent<\/i> (1907), and Under Western Eyes<\/i> (1911).\r\n\r\nThe plots of Conrad\u2019s stories often revolve around the relationship between an opinionated but ethical main character\u2014Marlow in Heart of Darkness<\/i> and Lord Jim<\/i>\u2014and another essentially decent man, tempted and corrupted by the promise of wealth and power.\u00a0Nostromo, for example, the head of the longshoreman\u2019s union in a South American country in the midst of a revolution, is entrusted because of his reputation as the most brave and honourable of men to protect a shipment of silver, which the mine owner, Charles Gould, fears will fall into the hands of the revolutionaries.\u00a0The boat in which Nostromo has hidden the silver is rammed by a warship belonging to the revolutionary forces.\u00a0Nostromo saves and hides the silver on a deserted island, but he claims it sank with his boat.\u00a0Embittered by his sense that the elite politicians and businessmen of his nation patronize him, Nostromo begins to recover the silver for himself until he is shot and killed by the island\u2019s lighthouse keeper who mistakes Nostromo for an intruder.\u00a0Such plots, conflicts, and moral dilemmas make for complex stories with\u00a0the characters developed with considerable psychological intensity, anticipating the work of Conrad\u2019s great successors: D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.\r\n\r\nConrad\u2019s style also makes him one of the great novelists of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.\u00a0His plots are rich and complex, often forsaking a linear\u00a0narrative\u00a0in favour of a recursive one, which adds depth and suspense to the story.\u00a0He did not learn English until he was in his early twenties, and he always spoke with a heavy accent, yet he mastered the vocabulary and the rhythms of the language so thoroughly that the landscapes and the cityscapes that he renders, often in exquisite detail, come to life.\u00a0His ear for dialogue is equally true.\r\n\r\nAfter 1911, Conrad continued his impressive pace as a novelist and short story writer.\u00a0Critics generally agree that his best work was behind him, although opinion on the merits of some of his later novels, Chance<\/i> (1914), Victory<\/i> (1915), and The Shadow Line<\/i> (1917), is divided.\u00a0 Conrad certainly remained a popular novelist, whose works sold well, and who, despite heavy expenses and debts that resulted from a sometimes profligate lifestyle, became a wealthy man.\u00a0Sales were helped by the stories\u2019 exotic settings and spirit of romantic adventure, which appealed to an ever-growing late-Victorian readership.\r\n\r\nConrad was hard at work, lecturing and writing, until his death in August 1924, with his final novel, Suspense<\/i>, left unfinished.","rendered":"<\/a>Joseph Conrad was born in Berdyczow, which, at the time of his birth, on December 3, 1857, was a city in Ukraine. His birth name was Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, anglicized years later when he became a British citizen. Before one of those border realignments that regularly occur in that part of the world, Berdyczow had been a part of the Kingdom of Poland.\u00a0The distinction is important because Polish nationalism shaped Conrad\u2019s early years.\u00a0His parents were Polish nobility, and Conrad\u2019s father, in addition to working as a writer and a translator, was a political activist, whose goal was to free Poland from Russian domination.\u00a0 For this, he was arrested and his family exiled to Vologda.\u00a0Within seven years, both of Conrad\u2019s parents had died of tuberculosis and he was sent to live with his mother\u2019s brother, his Uncle Tadeusz, in Krakow.<\/p>\n
Determined to be a sailor, Conrad left home at 16 and moved to Marseilles, France, where he began his apprenticeship, working entry-level positions on several merchant ships.\u00a0His career floundered, however, when he learned that to continue this line of work he needed the permission from the Russian consul, who was more likely to conscript Conrad into the Russian army than grant permission.\u00a0Moreover, Conrad had gambling debts he could not pay.\u00a0In despair, he wounded himself in the chest in a half-hearted suicide attempt, which prompted his uncle to settle Conrad\u2019s debts and to help him relocate to England.\u00a0For the next 16 years, Conrad worked in the British mercantile marine, rising in rank to master mariner.\u00a0In 1886, at the age of 29, he became a British citizen.<\/p>\n
In 1890, Conrad captained a steamer up the Congo River, an adventure that\u00a0inspired Heart of Darkness<\/i>.\u00a0As a Pole whose father was a political activist fighting to rebuild a nation ruthlessly conquered by other European powers, Conrad was sensitive to the exploitation and disruption that occurs when one culture will use any means, including aggressive military action, to impose its will upon another.\u00a0The motive is often the theft of natural resources, such as oil, precious metals, or forests.\u00a0In Heart of Darkness<\/i>, it is ivory, valuable in Europe at the time for the manufacture of piano keys, elaborate chess pieces, jewelry, billiard balls, toiletry items, and ornaments of various kinds. Lured by the promise of wealth, adventurers and fortune hunters, with the blessing of Belgium\u2019s King Leopold, who took his cut, rushed to the Congo ready and eager to decimate the elephant population and harvest its ivory. Heart of Darkness<\/i> was first published in three installments in 1899 in Blackwoods Magazine<\/i>.\u00a0In 1902, it was one of the stories in Conrad\u2019s book, Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories<\/i>.\u00a0It is among Conrad\u2019s best-known works, and one of the great novellas in the English language.<\/p>\n
By 1894, with the help of an inheritance from his uncle, Conrad\u2019s transition from sailor to writer was complete.\u00a0He married, settled on a farm in Kent, and became a prolific writer, the author of some of the great works\u00a0of the 20th century: Lord Jim<\/i> (1899), Typhoon<\/i> (1902), Nostromo<\/i> (1904), The Secret Agent<\/i> (1907), and Under Western Eyes<\/i> (1911).<\/p>\n
The plots of Conrad\u2019s stories often revolve around the relationship between an opinionated but ethical main character\u2014Marlow in Heart of Darkness<\/i> and Lord Jim<\/i>\u2014and another essentially decent man, tempted and corrupted by the promise of wealth and power.\u00a0Nostromo, for example, the head of the longshoreman\u2019s union in a South American country in the midst of a revolution, is entrusted because of his reputation as the most brave and honourable of men to protect a shipment of silver, which the mine owner, Charles Gould, fears will fall into the hands of the revolutionaries.\u00a0The boat in which Nostromo has hidden the silver is rammed by a warship belonging to the revolutionary forces.\u00a0Nostromo saves and hides the silver on a deserted island, but he claims it sank with his boat.\u00a0Embittered by his sense that the elite politicians and businessmen of his nation patronize him, Nostromo begins to recover the silver for himself until he is shot and killed by the island\u2019s lighthouse keeper who mistakes Nostromo for an intruder.\u00a0Such plots, conflicts, and moral dilemmas make for complex stories with\u00a0the characters developed with considerable psychological intensity, anticipating the work of Conrad\u2019s great successors: D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.<\/p>\n
Conrad\u2019s style also makes him one of the great novelists of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.\u00a0His plots are rich and complex, often forsaking a linear\u00a0narrative\u00a0in favour of a recursive one, which adds depth and suspense to the story.\u00a0He did not learn English until he was in his early twenties, and he always spoke with a heavy accent, yet he mastered the vocabulary and the rhythms of the language so thoroughly that the landscapes and the cityscapes that he renders, often in exquisite detail, come to life.\u00a0His ear for dialogue is equally true.<\/p>\n
After 1911, Conrad continued his impressive pace as a novelist and short story writer.\u00a0Critics generally agree that his best work was behind him, although opinion on the merits of some of his later novels, Chance<\/i> (1914), Victory<\/i> (1915), and The Shadow Line<\/i> (1917), is divided.\u00a0 Conrad certainly remained a popular novelist, whose works sold well, and who, despite heavy expenses and debts that resulted from a sometimes profligate lifestyle, became a wealthy man.\u00a0Sales were helped by the stories\u2019 exotic settings and spirit of romantic adventure, which appealed to an ever-growing late-Victorian readership.<\/p>\n
Conrad was hard at work, lecturing and writing, until his death in August 1924, with his final novel, Suspense<\/i>, left unfinished.<\/p>\nMedia Attributions<\/h2>
![Joseph_Conrad<\/a> © George Charles Beresford is licensed under a](\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Joseph_Conrad.PNG\"){kind=link}