Black and white photograph of Polish-born English writer Joseph Conrad.

Joseph Conrad

(1857 - 1924)

Leaving Kraków for Marseille at the age of sixteen in 1874, Joseph Conrad, the son of a Polish nobleman, made his earliest sea voyages aboard steamers bound for the West Indies—at one time running guns—and docked in England for the first time in 1878, knowing only a few words of the country’s language. He served sixteen years in the British Merchant Navy, his experiences furnishing him with material for the works of fiction he published in English, among them, Heart of Darkness in 1899, Lord Jim in 1900, and Typhoon in 1902.

All Writing

Voices In Time

1886 | London

Sea Change

Joseph Conrad at the start of a brilliant career.More

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

—Joseph Conrad, 1900

Voices In Time

1902 | Congo River

Time Travel

Joseph Conrad travels to a land before time.More

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

—Joseph Conrad, 1899

Voices In Time

c. 1880 | London

Love of the Sea

Joseph Conrad’s complicated relationship with the briny deep.More

Miscellany

Joseph Conrad recalled, “It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself, with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no longer in my character now, ‘When I grow up I shall go there.’”

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