The JosephAuthor Conrad Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), whose real name was J zef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, was born on 3rd December 1857 in Ukraine, which was part of the Russian Empire at the time, but had formerly belonged to Poland. His parents were Polish aristocrats and patriots, who were found guilty of conspiring against Russia and consequently exiled to Northern Russia. They both died at a young age of tuberculosis, and Joseph, who was then eleven, was placed in the care of his maternal uncle. As a boy, Conrad was not in good health and had poor school results, but, although disliking school discipline, he was curious and well-read1. He knew French, German and Russian. From an early age, he expressed the wish to become a sailor, so, when he was sixteen, his uncle sent him to Marseilles to start his career. He spent the next four years on French ships, mainly travelling to and from the West Indies. It was a wild period, during which he gambled2 heavily, ran into debt and was even involved in the smuggling3 of weapons. He attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest, but survived and then joined the British Merchant Navy, where he served for the next sixteen years, rising from steward4 to master mariner 5. He probably began studying English just before he started working on British ships, but English became the language in which he would write all his books. He managed to acquire an extremely wide vocabulary and to master its many possibilities, so that it eventually became his second language. 1. well-read: someone who has learnt a lot about different subjects by reading. 2. gamble: to play games in the hope of winning money. 3. smuggling: the act of taking goods illegally into or out of a country. 4. steward: a man who works on a means of transport (ship, aircraft, train) looking after passengers and serving meals. 5. master mariner: a seaman who is qualified to be a captain. 4