The Mirror of the Sea

The Mirror of the Sea is a collection of autobiographical essays originally published variously in several magazines between 1904 and 1906. In discussing the work, Conrad described it as "a very intimate revelation . . . of my relation with the sea."



Conveyed in his haunting, understated, and incisive prose, Conrad offers poignant and passionate observations on ships and their captains, oceans, hurricanes, departures, landfalls, and the broad range of sea-going topics he became intimately familiar with during the nearly twenty years he spent shipping out as a merchant sailor. The first of two autobiographical accounts, followed by A Personal Record in 1912, it was published to great critical acclaim in 1906 and endures as a classic memoir in literature.



Joseph Conrad (born; Berdichev, Imperial Russia, 3 December 1857 3 August 1924, Bishopsbourne, Kent, England) was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England. He was granted British nationality in 1886, but always considered himself a Pole. Conrad is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent). He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature.