Among the literary works of Joseph Conrad, his letters addressed to close relatives provide much insight into his personal life. These letters seem to be stripped of the embellishments and stylistic devices that would typically aim to shape the reader’s image of the author according to certain expectations on part of the recipients. In the case of a letter to his cousin and friend, who had known Conrad since his childhood, there was no need to create a false persona. As a result, it is in these private letters that we are most likely to encounter Conrad, the living person.
Written in Sierra Leone on May 22, 1890, Joseph Conrad’s letter to Karol Zagórski provides valuable insight into Conrad as both a man and a Pole. Although the original document is lost, its content is known through the English translation contained in Joseph Conrad: Life & Letters (1927) by Georges Jean-Aubry. Based on this letter and a French version in Jean-Aubry’s archive, Halina Carroll-Najder re-translated the letter into Polish, published in 1968 by Zdzisław Najder. Carroll-Najder’s translation aimed to reflect Conrad’s writing style, influencing the fidelity to the original. This article introduces an unknown copy of the letter, discovered in the author’s family collection, and examines its provenance, tracing its donation from Conrad’s cousin to Jan Szwykowski, director of the publishing house that published Conrad’s works. The paper concludes with a transcription of the letter.