A Personal Record is an autobiographical work (or ‘fragment of biography’) by Joseph Conrad, published in 1912.It has also been published under the titles A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences and Some Reminiscences.Notoriously unreliable and digressive in structure, it is nonetheless the principal contemporary source for information about the author’s life.[citation needed] It tells about his schooling in Russian Poland, his sailing in Marseille, the influence of his uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski, and the writing of Almayer’s Folly.It provides a glimpse of how Conrad wished to be seen by his British public, as well as being an atmospheric work of art.[citation needed]
The ‘Familiar Preface’ Conrad wrote for it includes the often quoted lines:’Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as the hills. It rests notably, among others, on the idea of Fidelity.’
Conrad wrote a new ‘Author’s Note’ to A Personal Record for the Doubleday collected edition of his works (published in 1920) in which he discussed his friendship with the British colonial official and writer Hugh Clifford.