Joseph Conrad

Tales of Unrest. 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. Tales of Unrest is a collection of short stories by Joseph Conrad originally published in 1898. Four of the five stories had been published previously in various magazines. This was the first published collection of any of Conrad's stories.