Biographie de Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (originally Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski) was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. His parents, ardent Polish patriots, died when he was a child, following their exile for anti-Russian activities, and he came under the protection of his tradition-conscious uncle, Thaddeus Bobrowski, who watched over him for the next twenty-five years. In 1874 Bobrowski conceded to his nephew's passionate desire to go to sea, and Conrad travelled to Marseilles, where he served in French merchant vessels before joining a British ship in 1878 as an apprentice.
In 1886 he obtained British nationality and his Master's certificate in the British Merchant Service. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. The following year he married Jessie George and eventually settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen years such modern classics as Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes, He continued to write until his death in 1924.
Today Conrad is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of fiction in English - his third language. He once described himself as being concerned with the ideal value of things, events and people; in the Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus he defined his task as by the power of the written word ... before all, to make you see. Martin Seymour-Smith was born in Stoke Newington, London, in 1928, the son of a well-known librarian and bibliographer.
A poet, critic and literary historian, he published many books, the best known being the massive Macmillan Guide to World Literature (1986), Reminiscences of Norma (poems, 1971) and his biographies of Robert Graves, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy. He was Visiting Professor of Literature and Writer-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin in 1971-72. Martin Seymour-Smith died in 1998. He is survived by his wife and two adult daughters.
His edition of Conrad's The Secret Agent is also published in Penguin.
