Joseph Conrad

Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Russian-occupied Poland; his father, a nationalist agitator, died in exile when Conrad was eleven. He left for a career at sea, first in the French merchant marine, then the British, rising to master mariner and only fully learning English, his third language, as an adult.

A voyage up the Congo in 1890, arranged for a Belgian trading company, gave him the material and the horror behind Heart of Darkness. He retired from the sea in 1894 to write, producing Lord Jim and Nostromo while living for years on the edge of poverty and depression; real financial security only arrived with Chance in 1913, a decade before his death from a heart attack in 1924.