LordJim

LORD JIM: A TALE JOSEPH CONRAD (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was born in December 1857 in Berdichev (now in the Ukraine) of Polish parents. His father, a poet and translator, and his mother were exiled for nationalist activities and died when he was a child. He grew up and was educated informally in Lemberg (now L'viv) and Cracow, which he left for Marseilles and a career at sea in 1874. After voyages to the French Antilles, he joined the British Merchant Service in 1878, sailing first in British coastal waters and then to the Far East and Australia. In 1886, he became a British subject and received his captaincy certificate. In 1890, he was briefly in the Congo with a Belgian company. After his career at sea ended in 1894, he lived mainly in Kent. He married in 1896 and had two sons. Conrad began writing, in his third language, in 1886. His first novels, Almayer's Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896), were immediately hailed as the work of a significant new talent. He produced his major fiction from about 1897 to 1911, a period that saw the publication of The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897), Heart of Darkness (1898–9),......