Some Reminiscences

Joseph Conrad

May 2015 · The Floating Press

About this ebook

One of the unifying themes that runs through Joseph Conrad's work is the problem of perception: two people can witness the same event and come away with completely diverging impressions of what occurred. Given his preoccupation with perception, it comes as no surprise that Some Reminiscences, the closest thing to a memoir that Conrad ever published, is a loosely interconnected series of observations, essays, and vignettes, rather than a traditional, linear "life story."

About the author

Joseph Conrad is recognized as one of the 20th century's greatest English language novelists. He was born Jozef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. His father, a writer and translator, was from Polish nobility, but political activity against Russian oppression led to his exile. Conrad was orphaned at a young age and subsequently raised by his uncle. At 17 he went to sea, an experience that shaped the bleak view of human nature which he expressed in his fiction. In such works as Lord Jim (1900), Youth (1902), and Nostromo (1904), Conrad depicts individuals thrust by circumstances beyond their control into moral and emotional dilemmas. His novel Heart of Darkness (1902), perhaps his best known and most influential work, narrates a literal journey to the center of the African jungle. This novel inspired the acclaimed motion picture Apocalypse Now. After the publication of his first novel, Almayer's Folly (1895), Conrad gave up the sea. He produced thirteen novels, two volumes of memoirs, and twenty-eight short stories. He died on August 3, 1924, in England.