Joseph Conrad
（1857—1924）

Joseph Conrad was born in Poland. His parents were fervent patriots and were exiled by the Czar-Russian government. At the age of ten he was adopted by his kind-hearted uncle after the death of his parents. He went to Marseilles in 1874 and worked on a French merchant ship. In 1878 Conrad joined the English merchant marine and began to learn English. He received promotions and became a British subject in 1886. During his voyages for 20 years, he traveled all over the world and accumulated a rich life experience. Conrad was good at writing sea novels and was called “master of sea novels”. Conrad died of a heart attack at the age of 67 at Bishopsbourne near Canterbury.

Throughout the twentieth century Heart of Darkness (1902) is famous not only as one of Conrad's greatest achievements but also as a highly symbolic story—the story about Marlow's adventures in the Congo. Lord Jim (1900) is about a young English sea man named Jim who breaches his duty because of temporary meanness and cowardness. He is condemned by the public and his own conscience but he finally regains his lost honor upon death. Conrad also wrote many other novels such as The Nigger of the “Narcissus”(1897), Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907) and Victory (1914). Conrad is a master prose stylist. Some of his works have a strain of romanticism, but more importantly he is recognized as an important forerunner of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have a profound impact on the Modernist movement.