Ford Madox Ford

The Inheritors (1901) Ford Madox Ford

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. Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer 17 December 1873 - 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature. The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story (1901) is a quasi-science fiction novel on which Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad collaborated. Written before the first World War, its themes of corruption and the effect of the 20th century on British aristocracy were prescient. It was first published in London by William Heinemann and later the same year in New York by McClure, Phillips and Company.