This European existentialist was a naturalized British novelist of Polish ancestry. He became famous for his stories about the sea and about life in Malaya, the Congo, and Europe. Most remarkably he wrote in English, which he learned when he was 20 years old. His first language was Polish and he also spoke French fluently.

Conrad's name was originally Josef Teodor Konrad Naecz Korzeniowski. He was born near Kiev in what was then Russian Poland. His father was a Polish patriot and Josef went into exile with him in Russia. As a child, Conrad was fascinated by his father's translations of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, and by sea stories. He was orphaned at the age of 12, and when he was 16 years old he left Russian-occupied Poland and made his way to Marseille, France. For the next four years he worked on French ships, ran guns for the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, and became involved in a love affair that brought him to the brink of suicide. He then entered the British merchant service, becoming a master mariner and a naturalized British subject in 1886; a few years later he changed his name to sound more English. For the next decade he traveled widely, mostly in eastern waters. Conrad's experiences, especially in the Malay Archipelago and on the Congo River in 1890, are reflected in his writing, which was done in English, his third language (after Polish and French). Conrad published his first novel and married Jessie George in 1895.

Conrad produced 13 novels, two volumes of memoirs, and 28 short stories, although writing was not easy or painless for him. Perhaps only another writer can fully appreciate his comment regarding the completion of the novel Nostromo (1904), which many critics regard as his masterpiece: "an achievement upon which my friends may congratulate me as upon recovery from a dangerous illness." In addition to the strain of writing, he endured suffering caused by gout, as well as his wife's crippling illness, and the meager income he received from his work. Conrad's life at sea and in foreign ports furnished the background for much of his writing, giving rise to the impression that he was primarily committed to foreign or alien concerns. In reality, however, his major interest was the human condition. Often his narrator is a retired master mariner, obviously Conrad's alter ego, so that some of his novels can be termed autobiographical; one example is his first published work, Almayer's Folly (1895).

One of Conrad's best-known novels is Lord Jim (1900), in which he explored the conception of personal honor through the actions and emotions of a man who spends his life trying to atone for an act of cowardice he committed as a young officer during a shipwreck in the East. Among his other works are The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), focused on a black sailor; The Secret Agent (1907), concerning anarchists in London; Under Western Eyes (1911), set in repressive 19th-century Russia; Victory (1915), set in the South Seas; and the story Heart of Darkness (1902). Heart of Darkness is one of Conrad's best-known stories and reveals the terrifying depths of human corruptibility. In most of Conrad's writings, his outlook is bleak. He writes in a rich, vivid prose style with a narrative technique that makes skillful use of breaks in linear chronology. His character development is powerful and compelling.

For many years, Conrad meditated on life as a romance of adventure, and on humane tragedy. He saw three main aspects to man's life: (1) his relation to the natural universe, (2) his relation to human society, (3) and his personal self-fufillment. He was a master of both romance and tragedy. Conrad died at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, in 1924.

• Polish-born English novelist and short-story writer
• Birth: December 3, 1857
• Death: August 3, 1924
• Place of Birth: Berdychev, Poland (now Berdychiv, Ukraine)
• Known for depicting his maritime adventures in rich, vivid prose
• 1874 - Worked on a French ship as a sailor until 1878
• 1878 - Worked as a sailor on British ships and wrote about his experiences at sea
• 1886 - Earned the title of master mariner; became a British subject
• 1894 - Settled in England
• 1895 - Published his first novel, Almayer's Folley
• 1897 - Published The Nigger of the Narcissus, a detailed narrative about an ailing black sailor
• 1900 - Published the novel Lord Jim
• 1902 - Published Heart Of Darkness, a short story based on his own experiences working on the Congo River in 1890
• 1903 - Published Typhoon and Other Stories
• 1904 - Published the novel Nostromo, which explores political upheaval in a fictional South American country
• 1913 - Published the novel Chance, the first of his works to bring him monetary success