Joseph Conrad was born Josef Teodor Korzeniowski on 3rd of December 1857, in Ukraine. At that time Ukraine was occupied by Russia. He was the only child of Apollo Korzeniowski and Ewa Dobrowska. His father was a writer, translator, political activist, and would be revolutionary. His parents, both belonged to the Polish noble class and they were polish patriots. They conspired against oppressive Russian rule. Conrad at an early age, had opportunity to be exposed to English, when his father was translating the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Victor Hugo in order to support the household. His English remained heavily accented for the rest of his life, and it was his third language, after Polish and French. His parents were arrested and exiled …show more content…
Conrad had poor health and he didn’t do well at school. His illness was clearly of nervous origin. He didn’t show much interest to study. In 1971, when thirteen year old, Conrad announced that he intended to become a sailor. On October 13, 1874, when he was sixteen year old, went to Marseilles, France, where he entered the French marine service. For the next twenty years, Conrad turned to have a successful career as a ship’s officer. Conrad did not finish his secondary school, but he became fluent in French, got some knowledge of Latin language, German and Greek. He read a lot of Polish Romantic literature. In 1878 Conrad for the first time went to England. He worked as a seaman on English ships, and in 1880 he began his career as an officer in the British merchant service. His travelling enabled him to go to distant countries such as Australia, India, Singapore, Java, and Borneo. All those travelling experiences, provided the background for most of his fiction. In 1886 he became a British citizen, and on that same year he changed his name into Joseph Conrad. In 1886 he travelled to the Belgian Congo, Zaire, and Africa, which inspired or more precisely made the foundation for his great novella: “The Heart of Darkness”. Many of characters in Heart of Darkness came from that