A Personal Record

Joseph Conrad looks back over his own unusual life in these reflective pages, tracing the path that carried him from a Polish childhood under Russian rule to the deck of a ship and finally to the writer’s desk. He recalls the slow composition of his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, often written in odd hours and strange places, and he thinks aloud about memory, conscience, and what it means to work in a language not his own. This is less a straight autobiography than a set of intimate meditations, circling and returning rather than marching in order. It offers a rare window into how one of English literature’s great stylists came to be. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.