Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)

Born Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski – novelist, one of the most eminent writers of his times; a Pole writing in English, dubbed (by Michał Choromański) “the Słowacki of the tropical islands”. His début novel was Szaleństwo Almayera (Almayer’s Folly, 1895). Conrad published several dozen collections of short stories and novels, whose number includes Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, with Francis Ford Coppola basing his famous 1979 Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando on the latter, as well as Chance, and The Shadow Line. To a great extent, Joseph Conrad’s works are based on his own experience of the years he spent on the seas as a sailor. He made port in the Far East, Australia and Australasia, and Central America; he was for some time captain of a steamship travelling up and down the Congo. Conrad finally settled down in England, where he was buried at the cemetery in Canterbury under the name of Korzeniowski. He lived in Kraków, where his father died, in 1867–1874, and attended Nowodworski College. Most translations of his works into Polish are the work of Aniela Zagórska, the writer’s cousin. In 2007, the National Bank of Poland issued a set of coins to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth. The famous writer can boast over a festival bearing his name – since 2009 the International Joseph Conrad Literature Festival is held in Kraków.



Portrait of Joseph Conrad published by Dom Książki Polskiej, 1928