ABSTRACT
Joseph Conrad was bom Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Russian Poland. He joined the merchant marine in 1874, learned English three years later, and in 1886 became a British subject. He began writing fiction in London in 1889. He kept a diary of his short visit and drew on the experience for the story 'An Outpost of Progress' as well as for the Heart of Darkness. This was serialized in 1899 and published in a single edition in 1902. In The Great Tradition, F. R. Leavis argues that the work of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad comprises a tradition sharing 'a vital capacity for experience, a kind of reverent openness before life, and a marked moral intensity'. Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as 'the other world', the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.
