Conrad once observed: “I am not a personage for an orderly biography, either auto or otherwise,” for he was shrewdly deceptive and often deliberately misleading about his own life. But he also had an apprehensive admiration for literary detection and told an acquaintance: “You are a terror for tracking people out!” Though Conrad’s life and works have been intensively examined, my own research and the use of unpublished material has revealed new information about his Polish background, the Carlist war in Spain and Dutch colonial rule in the Malay Archipelago; Conrad’s positive attitude toward the Jews and toward America; his suicide attempt; the questions asked on his three merchant marine examinations; his marriage; his gout; his close friendships with Perceval Gibbon and Sir Robert Jones; his little-known meeting with T. E. Lawrence; and, most importantly, his love affair in 1916 with the wild and beautiful American journalist Jane Anderson, who became a traitor in World War Two. I have found in Emin Pasha a new source for Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, in Sergei Nechaev for Razumov in Under Western Eyes, in Ford’s wife and his friend Arthur Marwood for Flora de Barral and Captain Anthony in Chance. I reveal the pervasive influence of Jane Anderson on The Arrow of Gold; show the significance of music in Conrad’s life and of opera in The Rescue; and discuss for the first time his unpublished film scenario, “The Strong Man.”