One of the great English novelists, Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Nałęcz Korzeniowski on this day 155 years ago in Berdychiv, Ukraine, although he considered himself Polish. Both of his parents died of tuberculosis, leaving him an orphan at the age of 11. He suffered from poor health and was a poor student at school, except in the subject of geography, and at the age of 16 he set out for France to become a sailor.
After a few years working as a sailor in France, based in Marseilles, including various voyages to the West Indies, Conrad moved to England to distance himself from compulsory military service in Russia, and in October 1878 set sail for Australia, arriving in Sydney Harbour in January 1879 before returning to London later that year. Over the next ten years he progressed through the British Merchant Navy to the rank of Master Mariner.
Conrad’s sailing adventures and the time he spent working for a Belgian company in the Congo became rich source material for his later literary efforts. He retired from sailing in 1894 at the age of 36, and his first novel Almayer’s Folly was published the following year. He soon developed a reputation as a romantic teller of exotic tales, although he did not achieve popular success until 1913.