By the time his first novel, Almayer's Folly, was published in 1895, there was no doubt that English was the language in which he would write.He had accumulated an immense Vocabulary.His style was intriguing but not foreign-sounding. In fact, he wrote with adirectness and plain style that were about 30 years ahead of their time.Some of his works, especially Heart of Darkness (1902) and Nostromo (1904), still sound reasonably modern.Why Conrad became such a master of written English will always be a matter of debate.He himself wrote that the rhythms of the language matched some inner sense that had been with him since birth.As he once wrote, "If I had not written in English, I would not have written at all,"He never wrote professionally in either of the languages that preceded English in his life, Polish and French.