JOSEPH CONRAD was born on 3rd December 1857, at Berdiczew in Podolia,
one of the Ukranian provinces of Poland long under Russian Tsarist
rule. He was the only child of Apollo Nałeçz Korzeniowski and his
wife Evelina Bobrowska, and he was christened Józef Teodor Konrad
Nałeçz Korzeniowski. His parents were of the landowner class, and his
father was deeply involved in the secret national Polish movement.
Apollo had literary interests too, wrote poetry and criticism and translated
from the French and German.

When Conrad was three his father was arrested by the Russian authori-
ties and exiled to Northern Russia, his wife and child being allowed to go
with him under the same conditions of banishment. Evelina's health
broke down and she died in exile in 1865. Two years later Apollo was
given conditional parole, but seven years of privation had also told on
him physically, and he died in Cracow in 1867, leaving the orphaned
Conrad in the care of his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski.

Between the ages of fifteen and seventeen Conrad astonished his uncle
and tutor by expressing from time to time a determination to go to sea,
a strange calling to people belonging to an inland country and tradition-
ally devoted to agricultural pursuits. Conrad persisted and in September
1874 he travelled to Marseilles to become a seaman. He spoke French
fluently and had one or two introductions to people in the port. After
some experience on two sailing ships, he became one of a syndicate of
four young men who bought the sixty-ton Tremolino and sailed her on
contraband activities until she was deliberately wrecked as described in
a chapter in The Mirror of the Sea. More of this phase of Conrad's
life is told in the story The Arrow of Gold.

Conrad's first English ship was the Mavis, which he joined at Marseilles
in April 1878, and it was aboard that vessel that he arrived at Lowestoft
two months later and saw England for the first time. After some coastal
trips in another ship, he joined as ordinary seaman a 'wool-clipper'
sailing to Australia. Returning to London at the end of 1880 he passed
examination as third mate in June of that year.

From then on he served as officer on several ships, voyaging to many
parts of the world, particularly across the Indian Ocean, and in and
around the Malay Archipelago and the Gulf of Siam. These are the
scenes of some of his best-known stories, Youth, Almayer's Folly, An
Outcast of the Islands, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus,' The Secret Sharer,
Typhoon, Lord Jim, Falk, The Rescue, The Shadow-Line, and others.
He passed his mate's examination in July 1883, and on 11th November
1886 he succeeded in the final seamanship test and obtained his Master
Mariner's Certificate. Conrad's accounts of these examinations are in

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