Joseph Conrad

In 1891, he was admitted in the hospital after he suffered from gout, severe pain in his right arm and malaria.

In 1896, he married Jessie George and the couple went on to have two children, Borys and George.

In 1912, his autobiographical book ‘A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences and Some Reminiscences’ was published.

Joseph Conrad was born to Apollo Korzeniowski, a writer and political activist and Ewa Bobrowska in in Berdichev, Podolia.

Due to his father’s farming business and his political activism, the family would often move from one place to another and in 1861, the family shifted to Warsaw, the capital of Poland.

In Warsaw, his father joined the resistance movement against the Russian Empire. As a result of this, the family was exiled to Vologda, Russia after which they were sent to Chernihiv in northeast Ukraine.

He was mostly home schooled by his father, who introduced him to the world of English literature, especially Victor Hugo’s works. He applied for British citizenship and received the same on August 19, 1886.

In 1874, he joined the merchant navy and spent four years on French ships, after which he joined the British merchant marine, and worked there for the next fifteen years. Although he served in the merchant navy for a period of nineteen years, he spent only about nine to ten years in the sea.

In 1894, he quit the merchant navy in order to pursue a career in writing and the following year, his first novel ‘Almayer's Folly’ was published.

In 1896, his second novel titled ‘An Outcast of the Islands’ was published. The story of this novel was inspired from his real life experience on the steamer ‘Vidar’.

In 1896, he finished writing his short story about his experiences in Congo, titled ‘An Outpost of Progress’. It was published the following year in the ‘Cosmopolis’ magazine.

In 1897, his novel ‘The Nigger of the 'Narcissus': A Tale of the Sea’ was published. It is considered as one of his best works belonging to the early phase of his career.

His novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ is considered to be one of the ‘hundred best novels in English of the 20th century’. This novel was also an inspiration behind the 1979 motion picture ‘Apocalypse Now’.