(Kaspar Almayer is a Dutch merchant taken under the wing o...)
Kaspar Almayer is a Dutch merchant taken under the wing of the wealthy Captain Lingard. Hoping to one day inherit Captain Lingard's wealth Almayer marries his daughter. The marriage is loveless, Captain Lingard loses much of his fortune searching for a hidden treasure, and Almayer's ventures continually fail. The rest of the novel concerns Almayer's conflicting desires, his love for his daughter, and his desire for money and self-redemption.
(The crew of the merchant ship Narcissus rally around a cr...)
The crew of the merchant ship Narcissus rally around a critically ill fellow crewmember, James Wait, putting their lives and the fate of the ship in jeopardy. Based in part on author Joseph Conrad’s experience during a voyage from Bombay to London, The Nigger of the Narcissus is considered to be one of Conrad’s best works.
(Lord Jim tells the story of a young, idealistic Englishma...)
Lord Jim tells the story of a young, idealistic Englishman, as unflinching as a hero in a book, who is disgraced by a single act of cowardice while serving as an officer on the Patna, a merchant-ship sailing from an eastern port. His life is ruined, an isolated scandal has assumed horrifying proportions. But, then he is befriended by an older man named Marlow who helps to establish him in exotic Patusan, a remote Malay settlement where his courage is put to the test once more.
(An unsuccessful English writer meets a fascinating woman ...)
An unsuccessful English writer meets a fascinating woman by chance, who seems to talk in metaphors. She claims to be from the Fourth Dimension and a major player in a plan to inherit the earth. They go their separate ways with her pledge they will meet again and again.
(Nostromo is the only man capable of the decisive action n...)
Nostromo is the only man capable of the decisive action needed to save the silver of the San Tome mine and secure independence for Sulaco, Occidental province of the Latin American state of Costaguana. Is his integrity as unassailable as everyone believes, or will his ideals, like those which have inspired the struggling state itself, buckle under economic and political pressures?
(In the back streets of nineteenth-century London, a group...)
In the back streets of nineteenth-century London, a group of revolutionaries plot an incident intended to turn English complacency on its ear. Their objective, the destruction of one of the nation's proudest monuments of scientific achievement, the Greenwich Observatory. Unbeknownst to the schemers, however, their ringleader is an agent provocateur, driven by a complex array of ambiguous motives and conflicting loyalties.
(Political turmoil convulses 19th-century Russia, as Razum...)
Political turmoil convulses 19th-century Russia, as Razumov, a young student preparing for a career in the czarist bureaucracy, unwittingly becomes embroiled in the assassination of a public official.
(The narrators describe and attempt to interpret various e...)
The narrators describe and attempt to interpret various episodes in the life of Miss de Barral, the daughter of a convicted swindler named Smith de Barral. Miss de Barral leads a sheltered life while her father is prosperous, then must rely on the generosity of others, who resent her or have agendas for her, before she escapes by marrying one Captain Anthony.
(Victory is Conrad's last great novel. Its central questio...)
Victory is Conrad's last great novel. Its central question, whether a man of moral sensitivity can function in a corrupt and derelict world, is treated with the author's fundamental pessimism and with faith in the possibility of redemption. The tale abounds in elements characteristic of the great storyteller's later work, an exotic setting, richly and powerfully evoked, muscular prose, complex characterization, and a compelling examination of the human capacity for good and evil.
(It is 1813 in Northern Spain. The crew of a British warsh...)
It is 1813 in Northern Spain. The crew of a British warship is attempting to make contact with the local resistance fighters who are battling the French. They send a brave crewman, known as Cuba Tom, to try to make contact with the local chief of the Guerrillos, but he fails to return.
(The novella depicts the development of a young man upon t...)
The novella depicts the development of a young man upon taking a captaincy in the Orient, with the shadow line of the title representing the threshold of this development.
(The Arrow of Gold is an exploration of the dangerous appe...)
The Arrow of Gold is an exploration of the dangerous appetites of men and of human vulnerability, as well as a profound meditation on the emotional boundary between people. Boasting a cast of extraordinary and eccentric personalities, including the heroine Doña Rita, this is a story of adventure on the high seas, of the revelation of love, of the crushing weight of loss, and of freedom found in the recklessness of unadorned sincerity.
(Captain Tom Lingard is on his way to help his friends, a ...)
Captain Tom Lingard is on his way to help his friends, a Malay prince and princess, reclaim their stolen land when he gets distracted by a marooned yacht. Lingard feels obliged to help his fellow Europeans out of their plight and he's increasingly attracted to Edith Travers, the married woman on board, but his rescue of the pleasure boat and its passengers plunges the captain deep into a dangerous vortex of local politics.
(The story takes the form of a series of love letters writ...)
The story takes the form of a series of love letters written by the unnamed narrator to a married woman, who is visiting Rome. In them, he states his intention to commit suicide as he anticipates being found out in a financial scandal. This new edition includes both writers' prefaces and Ford's description of his first collaboration with Conrad as an appendix.
(As the Revolution rages in France, a seafarer named Peyro...)
As the Revolution rages in France, a seafarer named Peyrol comes to the end of a lifetime lived on the seas and seeks refuge in a remote farmhouse on the French Riviera. As he attempts to settle into a peaceful existence, Peyrol struggles to redefine himself and returns to the sea for one final voyage.
(The story is set in Italy at the very end of the Napoleon...)
The story is set in Italy at the very end of the Napoleonic wars, and features the young Englishman Cosmo Latham, who at the novel's opening is just arriving in Genoa, not so very far from the former emperor's place of exile, Elba.
Joseph Conrad, original name Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was a British novelist and short-story writer, whose works include the novels Lord Jim, Nostromo, and The Secret Agent and the short story Heart of Darkness.
Background
Joseph Conrad was born on December 3, 1857 in Berdychiv, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire; the region had once been part of the Kingdom of Poland. His parents were Apollo Korzeniowski, a writer and political activist, and Ewa Bobrowska.
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. Conrad's mother died of tuberculosis in 1865.
Education
Conrad's education was erratic. He was first tutored by his literary father in Russia. Because of the health problems, in 1866 he was sent to Kyiv and his mother's family estate at Novofastiv. In 1868, Conrad attended high school in the Austrian province of Galicia for one year. The following year he and his father moved to Krakow, Poland, where his father died in 1869. After his father's death, his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, sent Conrad to school at Krakow and then to Switzerland, but the boy was bored by school and yearned to go to sea. In 1874, Conrad left for Marseille with the intention of going to sea.
Later in life, Joseph Conrad was awarded honorary degrees from Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Yale universities, which he eventually refused.
Career
In 1874, Joseph Conrad 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, Joseph Conrad 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 by his real-life experience on the steamer Vidar.
In 1896, Conrad 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.
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was published in 1899. This novel was presented in a narrative style and was originally published in three parts by Blackwood’s Magazine. In 1900, his novel about the abandonment of a ship titled Lord Jim was published. This novel has been adapted into two films with the same title. In 1904, his book Nostromo, a novel set in the mysterious South American republic of Costaguana, was published by Harper & Bros.
Through his 1905 essay titled Autocracy and War, he made one of the most powerful political statements and claimed that Poland is a victim of German and Russian imperialism. Published in 1907, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, is one of his best political novels set in London.
Joseph's novel Chance was successfully serialized in the New York Herald in 1912, and his novel Victory, published in 1915, was no less successful. Though hampered by rheumatism, Conrad continued to write for the remaining years of his life.
Over the last two decades of his life, Conrad produced more autobiographical writings and novels, including The Arrow of Gold in 1919 and The Rescue in 1920. His final novel, The Rover, was published in 1923. Conrad died of a heart attack on August 3, 1924, at his home in Canterbury, United Kingdom.
Joseph Conrad was the greatest novelist of his generation, he wrote in English even though he did not speak the language fluently. His works unveil a strain of romanticism and he is widely regarded as the precursor of modernist literature. Some of his best works include Almayer's Folly, The Nigger of the Narcissus, Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, The Secret Sharer, Chance and Victory. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors, including T. S. Eliot, Maria Dąbrowska, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Joseph Conrad's religious skepticism appeared in his novels. In Under Western Eyes, he wrote, "A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary, men alone are capable of every wickedness."
Politics
A fervent British patriot, Conrad believed that, of all the empires, Britain’s was the best, however, he was acutely aware of the limits of British power. He systematically avoided all political commitments. He never voted in a British election in spite of his respect for English institutions, nor would he involve himself in Polish affairs. He distrusted socialism, as leading inevitably to Caesarism, yet loathed capitalism; autocracy and revolution he saw as alternate faces of a base coin. Although he sailed in an English ship when the navy was the vanguard of British imperialism, in private he despised the appalling fatuity in this business.
Joseph Conrad distrusted all abstract ideas because of the inhumanities committed in their name, yet he believed in certain fixed standards that could govern conduct. He saw state action as a form of vanity and disguised aggression, but on a personal level, man is a worker.
Conrad’s ideal Polish nationalism was never imperialistic, aggressive, or autocratic in home affairs, it was a stable hanging together based on self-discipline and a correct concern for duty to others.
Views
Conrad’s style makes him one of the great novelists of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. His plots are rich and complex, often forsaking a linear narrative in favor of a recursive one, which adds depth and suspense to the story. The plots of Conrad’s stories often revolve around the relationship between an opinionated but ethical main character and another essentially decent man, tempted and corrupted by the promise of wealth and power. Such plots, conflicts, and moral dilemmas make for complex stories with the characters developed with considerable psychological intensity, anticipating the work of Conrad’s great successors, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.
One characteristic of Conrad's novels is the fact that they take inspiration from his difficult and restless life. In this way, he totally identifies himself with the principal actors of his novels.
Conrad’s view of life is deeply pessimistic and it is represented in his writings. It is significant that Conrad repeats, again and again, situations in which such men are obliged to admit emotional kinship with those whom they have expected only to despise. This well-nigh despairing vision gains much of its force from the feeling that Conrad accepted it reluctantly, rather than with morbid enjoyment.
Across his writing, Conrad grappled with the ethical ramifications of living in a globalized world, the effects of dislocation, the tension and opportunity of multiethnic societies, the disruption wrought by technological change. He understood acutely the way that individuals move within systems larger than themselves, that even the freest will can be constrained by what he would have called fate. Conrad’s moral universe revolved around a critique of the European notion of civilization, which for Conrad generally spelled selfishness and greed in place of honor and a sense of the greater good.
Quotations:
"Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men."
"It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose."
"My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to make you see."
"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."
"Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others."
"The mind of man is capable of anything."
"Droll thing life is, that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself, that comes too late, a crop of inextinguishable regrets."
"But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens, I tell you, it had gone mad."
"We live as we dream, alone. While the dream disappears, life continues painfully."
"We live in the flicker, may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday."
"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream, making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence, that which makes its truth, its meaning, its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream alone."
"The question is not how to get cured, but how to live."
"The horror! The horror!"
"You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies, which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world, what I want to forget."
"Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence but more generally takes the form of apathy."
"We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness."
"It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core."
"Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life."
Personality
Joseph Conrad was deeply neurotic, subject to dark moods, and fits of temper. He also was a solitary man who did not connect, fully, even with his wife.
Physical Characteristics:
Conrad had a phobia of dentistry, neglecting his teeth until they had to be extracted. In one letter he remarked that every novel he had written had cost him a tooth. And he was often ill, suffering from an array of aches and pains, including gout and recurrent headaches.
Quotes from others about the person
"But read Conrad, not in birthday books but in the bulk, and he must be lost indeed to the meaning of words who does not hear in that rather stiff and somber music, with its reserve, its pride, its vast and implacable integrity, how it is better to be good than bad, how loyalty is good and honesty and courage, though ostensibly Conrad is concerned merely to show us the beauty of a night at sea." - Virginia Woolf
"Conrad was passionately concerned with politics. This is confirmed by several of his works, starting with Almayer's Folly. Nostromo revealed his concern with these matters more fully, it was, of course, a concern quite natural for someone from a country Poland where politics was a matter not only of everyday existence but also of life and death. Moreover, Conrad himself came from a social class that claimed exclusive responsibility for state affairs, and from a very politically active family. Norman Douglas sums it up, Conrad was first and foremost a Pole and like many Poles a politician and moralist malgré Lui. These are his fundamentals. What made Conrad see political problems in terms of a continuous struggle between law and violence, anarchy and order, freedom and autocracy, material interests and the noble idealism of individuals was Conrad's historical awareness. His Polish experience endowed him with the perception, exceptional in the Western European literature of his time, of how winding and constantly changing were the front lines in these struggles." - Zdzisław Najder
"He stayed with us for ten months. Intellectually he was extremely advanced but [he] disliked school routine, which he found tiring and dull; he used to say he planned to become a great writer. He disliked all restrictions. At home, at school, or in the living room he would sprawl unceremoniously. He suffered from severe headaches and nervous attacks." - Boarding house owner's daughter
"He's absolutely the most haunting thing in prose that ever was, I wish I knew how every paragraph he writes goes on sounding in waves, like the note of a tenor bell, after it stops. It's not built in the rhythm of ordinary prose, but on something existing only in his head, and as he can never say what it is he wants to say, all his things end in a kind of hunger, a suggestion of something he can't say or do or think. So his books always look bigger than they are. He's as much a giant of the subjective as Kipling is of the objective. Do they hate one another?" - T. E. Lawrence
What Conrad really learned as a sailor was not something empirical, an assembly of places and events but the vindication of a perspective he had developed in childhood, an impartial, unillusioned view of the world as a place of mystery and contingency, horror and splendor, where, as he put it in a letter to the London Times, the only indisputable truth is "our ignorance." - Leo Robson
Connections
In 1896, Conrad married Jessie George and the couple went on to have two children, Borys and George.
Father:
Apollo Korzeniowski
Apollo Nalęcz Korzeniowski was born on the 21st of February, 1820 and died on the 23rd of May, 1869. He was a poet and an ardent Polish patriot, as well as one of the organizers of the committee that went on in 1863 to direct the Polish insurrection against Russian rule. He was arrested in late 1861 and was sent into exile at Vologda in northern Russia.
Edward Garnett, in full Edward William Garnett was born on the 19th of February, 1868 and died on the 21st of February, 1937. He was an influential English critic and publisher’s reader who discovered, advised, and tutored many of the great British writers of the early 20th century.
