"A Personal Record is an autobiographical work (or ""fragment of biography"") by Joseph Conrad, published in 1912.It has also been published under the titles A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences and Some Reminiscences.Notoriously unreliable and digressive in structure, it is nonetheless the principal contemporary source for information about the author's life.[citation needed] It tells about his schooling in Russian Poland, his sailing in Marseille, the influence of his Uncle Tadeusz, and the writing of Almayer's Folly."

Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857) was a Polish writer who learned to read, write, and speak English after he was granted British nationality in 1886. Although his peers accepted him as a British gentleman, he never forgot where he came from. In fact, the history of his native land of Poland often inspired the short stories and novels he penned. Those details, along with the experience he'd had since moving to Great Britain, found their way into many of his published works. In An Autobiography of Joseph Conrad, editor Stephen Brennan has selected pieces from some of Conrad's better known nonfiction works—including The Mirror of the Sea (1906) and A Personal Record (1912)—to showcase some of the more exciting and trying times in the novelist's life. Readers will attend school with Conrad in Russian Poland, sail with him in Marseille, and meet family members who took part in his upbringing, such as Uncle Tadeusz. Portraits of Conrad throughout the years, in addition to photos of his town, home, and family, supplement the text and help readers envision the author and his surroundings during various stages in his life. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The story of one voyage of the sailing-ship Narcissus from Bombay to London--a story dealing with calms and with storms, with mutiny on the high seas, with bravery and with cowardice, with tumultuous life, and with death, the releaser from toil. (Published in the U.S. as "The Children of the Sea.")

Edward W. Said locates Joseph Conrad's fear of personal disintegration in his constant re-narration of the past. Using the author's personal letters as a guide to understanding his fiction, Said draws an important parallel between Conrad's view of his own life and the manner and form of his stories. The critic also argues that the author, who set his fiction in exotic locations like East Asia and Africa, projects political dimensions in his work that mirror a colonialist preoccupation with "civilizing" native peoples. Said then suggests that this dimension should be considered when reading all of Western literature. First published in 1966, Said's critique of the Western self's struggle with modernity signaled the beginnings of his groundbreaking work, Orientalism, and remains a cornerstone of postcolonial studies today.