Tommy

Joseph Conrad, born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, was a Polish-born novelist who spent most of his adult life in Britain. He is regarded as one of the greatest English novelists, which is even more notable because he did not learn to speak English well until he was in his 20s. He is recognized as a master prose stylist. Some of his works have a strain of romanticism, but more importantly he is recognized as an important forerunner of modernist literature. What was known of Captain Hagberd in the little seaport of Colebrook was not exactly in his favour. He did not belong to the place. He had come to settle there under circumstances not at all mysterious-he used to be very communicative about them at the time-but extremely morbid and unreasonable. He was possessed of some little money evidently, because he bought a plot of ground, and had a pair of ugly yellow brick cottages run up very cheaply. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many writers, including Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence and Graham Greene. Writing during the apogee of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences in the British Merchant Navy to create novels and short stories that reflected aspects of a world-wide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul. Amongst his best known works are Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900), Under Western Eyes (1911), Victory (1915) and The Rescue (1920).