Conrad, Joseph

Conrad, Joseph ( Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) (1857–1924), novelist and short story writer, born of Polish parents in the Russian-dominated Ukraine. From an early age he longed to go to sea and in 1874 he went to Marseilles, embarked on a French vessel, and began the career as a sailor which was to supply so much material for his writing. In 1886 he became a British subject and a master mariner and in 1894 he settled in England and devoted himself to writing. He published his first novel at the age of 38, writing in English, his third language.

Almayer's Folly (1895) was followed by An Outcast of the Islands (1896), The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897), and Lord Jim (1900). The sea continued to supply the setting for most of his novels and short stories. His narrative technique is characterized by a skilful use of breaks in time-sequence and he uses a narrator, Marlow, who provides a commentary on the action not unlike that of a Greek chorus. Conrad has been called an Impressionist, and the movement of the stories, of the images and emotions, is portrayed through each character's private vision of reality. He collaborated with F. M. Ford on The Inheritors (1900) and Romance (1903). Typhoon (1902) was followed by a major work, Nostromo (1904), a novel which explores one of Conrad's chief preoccupations—man's vulnerability and corruptibility. In his short story ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1902) Conrad had carried this issue to a terrifying conclusion. The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911) are both novels with political themes, the latter set in Switzerland and Russia and centred on the tragedy of the student Razumov, caught up in the treachery and violence of revolution. Conrad's work was at first ill-received by critics and public alike, and it was the novel Chance (1913) that brought him his first popular and financial success; it is the story of Flora de Barral, lonely daughter of a crooked financier, and combines the attractions of a sea background with the theme of romantic love and more female interest than is usual with Conrad. His other major works include Youth (1902), The Mirror of the Sea (1906), Victory (1915), The Shadow-Line (1917), The Rescue (1920), and The Rover (1923). Conrad's autobiography, A Personal Record, appeared in book form in 1912 and his unfinished novel Suspense was published in 1925.

By the time of his death, Conrad was well established in the literary world as one of the leading Modernists; a decline of interest in the 1930s was followed by increasing scholarly and critical attention, pioneered in part by a study in 1941 by M. C. Bradbrook, and by an essay in the same year by Leavis in Scrutiny (later reprinted in The Great Tradition) in which Conrad is placed ‘among the very great novelists in the language’. The Collected Letters, ed. F. Karl and L. Davis, were published in five volumes (1983–96).