Heart of Darkness By: Joseph Conrad The novel Heart of Darkness, was written by a man named Joseph Conrad in 1894. Conrad was born December 3, 1857 into a family of polish decent in the northern Ukraine. The backgrounds of his family members consisted of a father that was an avid translator of Shakespeare as well as poet, along with a mother, that while was prone to illness still was well read and very intelligent. When Conrad was five, his father was exiled into a prison camp in Northern Russia for alleged revolutionist plots against the government. Due to the harsh conditions of the prison, Conrad’s mother died within three years and his father four years later. It was the death