Joseph Conrad's Polish background, his extensive travels and his detached view of his adopted country, Britain, gave him a perspective unique among English writers of the twentieth century. Combining Continental and British influences, Victorian and Modernist styles, he was an artist acutely responsive to his age, whose works reflect and chronicle its shaping forces. This volume examines the biographical, historical, cultural and political contexts that fashioned his works. Written by a specialist, each short chapter covers a specific theme in relation to Conrad's life and work: letters, Modernism, the sea, the Polish and French languages, the First World War, and many other topics. This book will appeal to scholars as well as to those beginning their study of this extraordinary writer. It shows how this combination of different contexts allowed Conrad to become a key transitional figure in the early emergence of British literary modernism.