Initially, Korzeniowski did not want to leave Poland permanently; in 1883, he assured one of his father's friends that he would remember the pledge that "wherever he may sail he is sailing towards Poland". Yet, as a Russian subject and a son of convicted parents, he was liable for long military service, and his attempts to be exonerated from the allegations of the Russian State succeeded only in 1889. By that time, he had switched from the French to the British merchant fleet marine (in 1878) and had passed his examinations for master mariner (1886). That same year, he became a British subject. Though he kept up correspondence with his uncle, and visited his home country in 1889 and 1893, Korzeniowski's letters to him were destroyed during the Bolshevik Revolution. However, Bobrowski's letters of reply survived, and they constitute the most important biographical source of Korzeniowski's early years. Though he did not ever officially change his name, Korzeniowski assumed the pen-name of Joseph Conrad when he published his first novel, Almayer's Folly(1895), dedicated to the memory of Tadeusz Bobrowski who had died a year earlier, thus severing Conrad's last personal link with Poland.
For the first 20 years of his writing career, Conrad struggled with debts: his royalties fell far below his modest expenses. In summer 1914, he was able to take his first long vacation, taking his wife and two sons to Poland. The outbreak of the First World War caught them in Kraków; they spent two months in the city and then went south, to the Tatra Mountains. While in Kraków and Zakopane, Conrad met several Polish writers, artists and intellectuals. This was to be his last visit to his native country.
The reminiscences of his relatives and friends testify to Conrad's continued emotional involvement in the affairs, traditions, and culture of Poland. For example, at his country home in Kent, he would organise private recitals of Chopin's music.
At his funeral (he died near Canterbury on August 3, 1924), the only official present was a representative of the Prime Minister of Poland.
From the letters of Apollo Korzeniowski to his friends, we know that the young Conrad was an avid reader. He was certainly well acquainted with classical Polish literature, beginning with the work of the great sixteenth-century poet, Jan Kochanowski (whom he mentions in his letters). It is very likely that the poetry, drama and fiction of the Polish romantic writers (of whom his father was an epigone) formed the main body of his reading in his native language. "Polonism I have taken into my works from Mickiewicz and Słowacki", he declared in 1914, mentioning by name the two greatest writers, and moral and political authorities, of Polish romanticism.
Ideas of moral and national responsibility pervaded this literature. Fidelity and betrayal, honour and shame, duty and escape were frequent themes. The moral problems of an individual were typically posed in terms of communal obligations, and ethical principles, formed under the decisive influence of chivalry, were also grounded in the idea that an individual, however exceptional, is always a member of a community. A poet was a typical example of an exceptional individual, burdened with special duties towards his nation. The passage "from alienation to commitment", recognised as a frequent theme in Conrad's fiction, has been a staple subject of Polish romantic literature (as in Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz and Forefather's Eve). One of the more popular literary forms was the tale (gawęda), a story told by a personal narrator who is often one of the protagonists, and it is easy to find a continuation of this form in Conrad's narratives.
Apart from the general presence of important elements of the Polish cultural tradition, critics have identified in Conrad's writings many thematic, artistic, and verbal motifs taken from particular works of Polish literature. The Polish language itself also left its mark on Conrad's prose. Not only in the form of Polonisms (words and idioms used in their Polish rather than English sense), but also in occasional errors in the use of tenses, and an infrequent looseness of syntax. The rhetorical, rolling rhythm of his phrases can also be traced back to the influence of his native speech.