For Conrad the next twenty years - working as a writer - were years of suffering from shortage of money, deprivations and self-doubts. As late as 1914 he was to have real - also financial - success with his writing, which enabled him to pay his debts and to live a secured life. For now he could not imagine what was ahead of him, but there was no chance for a return. Even until the year 1900 he was sometimes thinking of working as a seaman again (being really disappointed by the fruitlessness of his doings). However, the termination of his sea-job had not been the idea of a single moment, but his poor health had driven him to look for another way of living. We cannot say which way he would have been taken if his health would have been more stable. But it is true to point out that he had accepted writing as a new challenging, frustrating, but interesting activity. He had to proof himself one more time.

Already in 1891 Tadeusz Bobrowski wrote in a letter to Conrad:

'Thinking over the causes of your melancholy most carefully I cannot attribute it either to youth or to age. No, it came from ill-health, from the wretched sufferings in Africa, but also from something more: 'the habit of reverie which I have observed to be part of your character. It is inherited; it has always been there, in spite of your active life'.

On April 29th, 1895 'Almayer's Folly' was published under the pen-name Joseph Conrad. The critics of this work were very positive, reaching from 'quite amazing' to 'first class' and 'absolutely worth reading'. But only a few copies of the book were sold.

During another treatment in Switzerland Conrad got to know Emilie Briquel. This new romance lasted until fall of 1895, when Emilie met a doctor and finally announced her engagement with him.

In September of this year Conrad finished the work on his second novel 'An Outcast of the Islands' and began writing a new story, called 'The Sisters'. Edward Garnett, who had also literarily promoted D.H. Lawrence and John Galsworthy, adviced Conrad to stop working on this project, because he thought it does not compare with the other works. 'I do not want to spend my life in a cockloft', he had told Garnett, when the two discussed the financial part of a writers career. Garnett remembered Conrad being a man with 'brilliant eyes, now narrowed and penetrating, now soft and warm ... whose speech was ingratiating, guarded and brusque turn by turn. I had never seen before a man so masculinely keen yet so femininely sensitive'.

'An Outcast of the Islands' was published in March 1896, while 'Sisters' was only published in 1928 after Conrad's death.