Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He was granted British nationality in 1886 but always considered himself a Pole. Though he did not speak English fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent), he was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe.

Joseph Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works still contain elements of nineteenth-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors, including T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner,Graham Greene, and more recently Salman Rushdie. Many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, Conrad's works.

Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his native Poland's national experiences and on his personal experiences in the French and British merchant navies to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world, while profoundly exploring human psychology. Appreciated early on by literary critics, his fiction and nonfiction have since been seen as almost prophetic, in the light of subsequent national and international disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Joseph Conrad (disambiguation)

Joseph Conrad was a Polish / British novelist. Just Joseph Conrad may also refer to:

People

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Joseph Conrad (general)

Joseph Conrad (May 17, 1830 – 1897) was a Union American Civil War officer who was brevetted a brigadier general of volunteers during the Atlanta Campaign.

Biography

He was born in Wied-Selters, Germany. He graduated from the Hesse-Darmstadt military academy in 1848, and emigrated to the United States, where he settled in the state of Missouri.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army, and was made captain of a company of the Third Missouri Infantry. In September 1861, he was promoted to major of the Fifteenth Missouri Infantry. He fought in the battles of Carthage, Pea Ridge, Corinth, Perryville, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge.

During the Atlanta Campaign, he commanded a brigade of the Army of the Cumberland at the battles of Franklin and Nashville. He was brevetted brigadier general for his services. He commanded the sub-district of Victoria in Texas until February 1866, when he was mustered out of the volunteer service.

In July 1866, he entered the regular army, and was commissioned captain in the 29th Infantry, transferred to the 11th Infantry in April 1869, and served with his regiment until October 1882, when he was retired with the rank of colonel. He was married to Minnie S. Conrad (12 June 1848 - 1 February 1898).