![]() Conrad's paternal grandfather Teodor had served under Prince Józef Poniatowski during Napoleon's Russian campaign and had formed his own cavalry squadron during the November 1830 Uprising. The Korzeniowski family had played a significant role in Polish attempts to regain independence. Polish literature, particularly patriotic literature, was held in high esteem by the area's Polish population. Though the vast majority of the surrounding area's inhabitants were Ukrainians, and the great majority of Berdychiv's residents were Jewish, almost all the countryside was owned by the Polish szlachta (nobility), to which Conrad's family belonged as bearers of the Nałęcz coat-of-arms. His family called him "Konrad", rather than "Józef". He 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. He was the only child of Apollo Korzeniowski-a writer, translator, political activist, and would-be revolutionary-and his wife Ewa Bobrowska. In front: a "Chopin's Warsaw" bench.Ĭonrad was born on 3 December 1857 in Berdychiv ( Polish: Berdyczów), Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire the region had once been part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. Nowy Świat 47, Warsaw, where three-year-old Conrad lived with his parents in 1861. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland-during nearly all his life, parceled 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. Numerous writers and critics have commented that his fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors. Ĭonrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of what he saw as an impassive, inscrutable universe. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Polish: ( listen) 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language.
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