Heart of Darkness

JOSEPH CONRAD was born in Polish Ukraine on December 3, 1857, with the name Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. Orphaned at the age of eleven, Conrad spent the remainder of his youth in Switzerland and Cracow before joining the French marines. In 1878, he enlisted in the British Merchant Navy. Following sixteen years of service, Conrad launched his literary career in England. He published many novels and stories, including Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), and most famously, The Heart of Darkness (1899), inspired by his steamboat voyage on the Congo River. Although English was his third language (after Polish and French), Conrad’s rich and distinctive prose established him as one of England’s greatest novelists. Conrad died on August 3, 1924, in Kent, England. Pericles Lewis is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature and Dean of Yale College at Yale University. The author or editor of six books on modern literature, he has most recently served as editor for literature since 1900 of the Norton Anthology of World Literature. He also served as founding President of Yale-NUS College (now NUS College) a joint venture between Yale and the National University of Singapore.