bio notes:
born: 12/3/1857
died: 8/3/1924
born as: Theodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

Polish-born English novelist and short-story writer who is noted for the richness of his prose and his renderings of dangerous life at sea and in exotic places. His initial reputation as a masterful teller of colorful adventures of the sea grew as his deeply pessimistic vision of the complexity of the human struggle was revealed. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature