Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography

In Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography (1960) Jocelyn Baines applies a discerning eye to Polish-British novelist Conrad’s life and writing. Conrad, a towering figure in the canon of English literature, is renowned for his early modernist writing with elements of narrative realism; scholarly study of Conrad’s work typically grapples with the complex psychological themes and character development. Conrad often referred to his writing as being “spiritually autobiographical,” therefore, Conrad’s works have served as a semi-reliable source from which biographers have attempted to sift the facts of his life from his fiction.

A Critical Biography joins an ongoing conversation about understanding Conrad’s life and literary legacy, exposing misconception and adding new evidence. In Conrad’s memoir, A Personal Record, he proves himself to be first and foremost, an artist who is more concerned with the truth in feeling than the facts of reality; this emphasis omits a significant amount of details on Conrad’s personal life. In fact, Conrad was personally consulted during the drafting of several previous biographies. These biographers have relied on their own qualified assumptions and interpretations following such conversations, leading to the distribution of distorted evidence on the man with mixed and sometimes conflicting results. Baines' biography is a decided departure from these works.

Another problematic issue in biographizing Conrad’s life surrounds the attempts to understand his psyche. The spiritual and emotional depth of Conrad’s writing has invited a significant amount of psycho-analysis, a process which attempts to define and describe a man’s conscious in terms which conform to Freudian understanding—an impossible task made in vain, further mystifying the man. Baines' biography refreshingly handles the man’s life and legacy critically, grappling with the facts of Conrad’s life in a scholarly approach while regarding him as an artist; Baines importantly interacts with Conrad’s fiction, while treating this content as an artistic expression of his conscious—a window into his mind, not an altered and embellished retelling of his life.



Baines describes Conrad’s turbulent childhood years, moving back and forth between Poland and Russia and losing both parents before adulthood. Conrad was born in Poland, named after his father, Joseph Theodore Apollonius Korzeniowski, who was also a writer and a translator of Shakespeare’s works; young Conrad learned his love of literature, specifically tales of the sea, from his father. His father’s political involvement in a movement which sought Poland’s independence from Russia, ultimately forced the family to move to Russia in 1862 where Conrad’s mother, Evelina Korzeniowski died three years later in 1865. Conrad and his father returned to Poland two years following his mother’s death. In 1868, Conrad began high school in Galicia, an Austrian province. The following year, the two returned to Poland; his father died that same year, leaving Conrad in the care of his uncle, Thaddeus Bobrowski.

As a teenager, Conrad traveled throughout Europe, eventually entering the French marine service where he spent twenty years, moving up in the ranks from third mate to a successful sea officer. His travels led him to the tropical, foreign shores of places like Australia, India, Java, Singapore, and Borneo, inspiring the exotic settings one observes in many of his books.

The biographer’s extensive research combs well-known documents for new information, correcting Conrad’s previous statements, a man revealed to confuse, or perhaps purposefully misconstrue, the facts and fictions of his own life. Conrad himself confirmed the popular opinion that the duel depicted in his work Arrow of Gold was inspired by real-life events; however, Baines suggests that letters between Conrad and his uncle allude to suicidal thoughts or a suicide attempt. The suicidal thoughts could have been a result of his defeat, his injuries a result of the duel, or the duel could have been an effort to conceal the true origins of his wounds. Baines is careful not to present bias over one theory or another, preferring to observe that the obscurity here arises from Conrad’s apparent tendency toward exaggeration and generalization in his discussion of his personal life.



The biography does an expert job recounting available evidence and presenting popular theories, navigating the mysticism with a critical eye, and only favoring or surmising where considerable evidence exists. A Critical Biography also surveys the middle and mature years of Conrad’s life following his military experience, describing his marriage to Jessie George in 1896, the birth of their two sons, and the family’s move to Kent, England where Conrad spent the remainder of his life.

Culminating in a coherent, sweeping, though ultimately fragmentary and incomplete view of Conrad’s life, A Critical Biography remains one of the most frequently referenced works on the man, his legacy, and what his literature really reveals about his life. Baines' treatment of the subject matter stands out for its careful handling of the information, placing emphasis on what has been verified versus what is speculation based on available evidence.