Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master stylist, both lush and precise, who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. Tales of Hearsay is a posthumous collection of four stories, published in 1911, the year after Conrad died, including The Tale which is considered to be the one of his best short stories.