JOSEPH CONRAD
By
HUGH WALPOLE
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1916
JOSEPH CONRAD
TO
SIR SIDNEY COLVIN
IN FRIENDSHIP
CONTENTS
| I. | Biography | |
| II. | The Novelist | |
| III. | The Poet | |
| IV. | Romance and Realism | |
| A Short Bibliography | ||
| American Bibliography | ||
| Index | ||
I
BIOGRAPHY
I
To any reader of the books of Joseph Conrad it must be at once plainthat his immediate experiences and impressions of life have gone verydirectly to the making of his art. It may happen often enough that anauthor's artistic life is of no importance to the critic and that hisdealing with it is merely a personal impertinence and curiosity, butwith the life of Joseph Conrad the critic has something to do, because,again and again, this writer deliberately evokes the power of personalreminiscence, charging it with the burden of his philosophy and thecreation of his characters.
With the details of his life we cannot, in any way, be concerned, butwith the three backgrounds against whose form and colour[Pg 8] his art hasbeen placed we have some compulsory connection.
Joseph Conrad (Teodor Josef Konrad Karzeniowski) was born on 6thDecember 1857, and his birthplace was the Ukraine in the south ofPoland. In 1862 his father, who had been concerned in the last Polishrebellion, was banished to Vologda. The boy lived with his motherand father there until his mother died, when he was sent back to theUkraine. In 1870 his father died.
Conrad was then sent to school in Cracow and there he remained until1874, when, following an absolutely compelling impulse, he went tosea. In the month of May, 1878, he first landed on English ground; heknew at that time no English but learnt rapidly, and in the autumn of1878 joined the Duke of Sutherland as ordinary seaman. He became aMaster in the English Merchant Service in 1884, in which year he wasnaturalised. In 1894 he left the sea, whose servant he had been fornearly twenty years: