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Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was a Polish-British novelist. Born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, he was the son of Apollo Korzeniowski, a Polish poet and revolutionary. Conrad’s childhood was marked by ill health and constant travel due to his father’s political commitments, and he was placed in the care of his uncle following Apollo’s death in 1869. In 1874, he was sent to Marseilles to pursue a career as a merchant marine, which he continued until 1893, when he first settled in London. By this time, he had already begun his first novel, Almayer’s Folly (1895), which earned him a reputation as an adventure writer. Struggling to establish himself as an English writer, facing xenophobia and financial stress, Conrad nevertheless produced some of the greatest literary works of his era, including Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907). Recognized as a pioneering figure of early modernism, Conrad also collaborated with English novelist Ford Madox Ford on three acclaimed novels: The Inheritors (1901), Romance (1903), and The Nature of a Crime (1924). Controversial for his depictions of colonialism and imperialism, Conrad has been alternatively viewed as a racist and opponent of racism by scholars, many of whom set their arguments alongside Chinua Achebe’s influential essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness,’” a central text of postcolonial criticism.
