Joseph Conrad (1857– 1924) lived a life as fantastic as any of his fiction. His aristocratic parents were ardent Polish patriots who died when he was a child as a result of their revolutionary activities. Conrad went to sea at sixteen, taught himself English, and gradually worked his way up until he passed his master’ s examination and was given command of merchant ships in Asia and on the Congo River. At the age of thirty-two, he decided to try his hand at writing. Although his work won the admiration of critics, sales were small. He was a nervous, introverted, gloomy man for whom writing was an agony, but he was rich in friends who appreciated his genius, among them Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Ford Madox Ford.
E. L. Doctorow is the author of numerous acclaimed novels, including Ragtime, World's Fair, and Billy Bathgate.
Debra Romanick Baldwin is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program at the University of Dallas, where she teaches the western literary tradition from Homer and Dante to Woolf and Bellow. Past President of the Joseph Conrad Society of America, she has written over a dozen articles and essays on Conrad, as well as on Flannery O’ Connor, St. Augustine, and Primo Levi.
