Heart of Darkness, a book by Joseph Conrad, was first published in 1899 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and later in Conrad's Youth and Two Other Stories (1902). Heart of Darkness considers the terror of Western colonialism, portraying it as a peculiarity that damages not only the lands and peoples it exploits but also those in the West who advance it. Even though it initially received an uninspired reception, Conrad's semiautobiographical story has proceeded to become one of the most widely examined works of English literature. Readers have not always treated Heart of Darkness well, reproving its dehumanizing portrayal of colonized peoples and its dismissive treatment of women. Heart of Darkness, on the other hand, has endured as a Modernist masterpiece directly linked to postcolonial realities.
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist, considered as one of the prominent novelists to write in the English language. He was born on 3 December 1857. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be considered a master prose stylist who guide a non-English sensibility into English literature. He was assigned British nationality in 1886 but always regarded himself a Pole. He enrolled the French Merchant Marine and began to work on British ships, learning English from his shipmates. He was made a master mariner and worked more than sixteen years before an event motivated him to try his hand at writing. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that represents trials of the human spirit in the middle of an unexpressive, transparent universe. During his lifetime Conrad was praised for the assets of his prose and his offerings of dangerous life at sea and in foreign places. His works include the novels Almayer's Folly (1895), Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), and The Secret Agent (1907) and the short story 'Heart of Darkness ' (1902). He died in August 1924.
