Blackwell Critical Biographies
1 total work
Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and died near Canterbury in 1924, having become one of the major British novelists of his time. This biography of this enigmatic figure uses archive material, as well as published sources, to reveal the especially close relationship, at every stage of Conrad's writing career, between his life and work. Conrad was both depressive and delinquent. He manipulated friends, such as Ford Madox Ford, Edward Garnett and John Galsworthy, into relationships that went at least some way to meeting his urgent psychological needs. He suffered from virulent writer's block, and would accept substantial advances from publishers and his agent, J.B. Pinker, for works which he then found himself unable or unwilling to write. Many of his best-known works, "Heart of Darkness", "Lord Jim" and "Nostromo", for example, can be seen as forms of escape from congenial duties. This study gives an account of the background of Joseph Conrad. It reveals Conrad to ba a tormented and self-defeating figure.