Joseph Conrad

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Lore & Background

Conrad was the only child of Apollo Korzeniowski—a writer, translator, political activist, and would-be revolutionary—and his wife Ewa Bobrowska. His family belonged to the Polish szlachta (nobility) as bearers of the Nałęcz coat-of-arms. In May 1861, the family moved to Warsaw, where Apollo joined the resistance against the Russian Empire. He was arrested and imprisoned in Pavilion X of the Warsaw Citadel. On 9 May 1862, Apollo and his family were exiled to Vologda, 500 kilometres north of Moscow. In January 1863, his sentence was commuted, and the family was sent to Chernihiv in northeast Ukraine. On 18 April 1865, Ewa died of tuberculosis. Apollo did his best to teach Conrad at home, introducing him to Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea and Shakespeare, but most of all to Polish Romantic poetry. Half a century later, Conrad explained: 'The Polishness in my works comes from Mickiewicz and Słowacki. My father read [Mickiewicz's] Pan Tadeusz aloud to me and made me read it aloud... I used to prefer [Mickiewicz's] Konrad Wallenrod [and] Grażyna. Later I preferred Słowacki.' In December 1867, Apollo took his son to Austrian-held Poland. On 20 February 1869, they moved to Kraków. A few months later, on 23 May 1869, Apollo Korzeniowski died, leaving Conrad orphaned at the age of eleven. Conrad was placed in the care of his uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski. He was not a good student; despite tutoring, he excelled only in geography. In the autumn of 1871, thirteen-year-old Conrad announced his intention to become a sailor, inspired by reading Leopold McClintock's book about his 1857–59 expeditions in the Fox, in search of Sir John Franklin's lost ships Erebus and Terror, and books by James Fenimore Cooper and Captain Frederick Marryat. On 13 October 1874, Bobrowski sent the sixteen-year-old to Marseille, France, for a planned merchant-marine career, providing him with a monthly stipend of 150 francs.

Reader's Guide

Conrad's works, written mostly in the first two decades of the 20th century, have been commented on by numerous writers and critics as seeming to anticipate later world events. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland—during nearly all his life, parcelled out among three occupying empires—and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. Tensions originating in his childhood in Poland and increasing in his adulthood abroad contributed to his greatest literary achievements. Zdzisław Najder observed that living away from one's natural environment tends to make people less sure of themselves, more vulnerable, and that the Polish szlachta and intelligentsia were social strata in which reputation was felt very important for a feeling of self-worth.

Did You Know?

• Conrad was christened Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski after his maternal grandfather Józef, his paternal grandfather Teodor, and the heroes (both named 'Konrad') of two poems by Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady and Konrad Wallenrod.
• His father Apollo was arrested and imprisoned in Pavilion X – the dread Tenth Pavilion – of the Warsaw Citadel, and Conrad wrote: '[I]n the courtyard of this Citadel—characteristically for our nation—my childhood memories begin.'
• At age thirteen, Conrad announced his intention to become a sailor after reading Leopold McClintock's book about his 1857–59 expeditions in the Fox, in search of Sir John Franklin's lost ships Erebus and Terror.
• Conrad did not speak English fluently until his twenties and always had a strong foreign accent.
• In a letter nine years after leaving Poland, Conrad wrote: 'I always remember what you said when I was leaving [Kraków]: "Remember—wherever you may sail, you are sailing towards Poland!"'