Joseph Conrad

Chance (1913) Joseph Conrad

Conrad was born on 3 December 1857 in Berdychiv (Polish: Berdyczów), Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire; the region had once been part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. He was the only child of Apollo Korzeniowski-a writer, translator, political activist, and would-be revolutionary-and his wife Ewa Bobrowska. He was christened Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski after his maternal grandfather Józef, his paternal grandfather Teodor, and the heroes (both named "Konrad") of two poems by Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady and Konrad Wallenrod, and was known to his family as "Konrad", rather than "Józef". Though the vast majority of the surrounding area's inhabitants were Ukrainians, and the great majority of Berdychiv's residents were Jewish, almost all the countryside was owned by the Polish szlachta (nobility), to which Conrad's family belonged as bearers of the Nalecz coat-of-arms. Polish literature, particularly patriotic literature, was held in high esteem by the area's Polish population. Chance is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1913, following serial publication the previous year. Although the novel was not one upon which Conrad's later critical reputation was to depend, it was his greatest commercial success upon initial publication. Chance is narrated by Conrad's regular narrator, Charles Marlow, along with other narrators, who take up the complex narrative at different points. The novel is also unusual among its author's works for such strong emphasis on a female character: the heroine, Flora de Barral.