In fleshing out the creator of Roget’s Thesaurus, writer Joshua Kendall faces something of a dramatic and structural problem: How does one enliven and sustain interest in a man who didn’t make his major intellectual contribution until he was 73 years old? The man in question is Peter Mark Roget, a physician by training and a wordsmith by choice. Kendall ties his chronicle together by demonstrating that Roget (1779-1869) was obsessed with classifying and list-making from early childhood onward. These habits of mind proved crucial when he finally decided the time had come to compile and publish his exhaustive list of English synonyms and their opposites (the term"antonym" was yet to be coined).

Roget’s life was not particularly exciting – even to him. True, he had a smothering, self-centered mother who eventually went mad, a rich and politically prominent uncle who committed suicide and a harrowing escape from French-held territory in 1803 after Napoleon resumed his war with Britain. But there were long periods during which Roget pursued his career only desultorily, seemingly indifferent to the cause that would ultimately immortalize him.

To compensate for the lack of intrinsic drama, Kendall amasses details of places and personalities that were significant to Roget, frequently drawing on tangential and recently discovered sources. Uneven as his personal life was, it is clear that Roget was unwavering in his fascination with science. He wrote and delivered papers on subjects ranging from anatomy to optics to improving the slide rule. Roget completed the first draft of his "Collection of English Synonyms classified and arranged" in 1805, but he did not publish it – and then in a much expanded form – until 1852.

In his epilogue, the author explains how Roget’s Thesaurus has survived as a reference book and valuable literary property (selling almost 40 million copies) despite the advent of online parallels and a withering criticism from author Simon Winchester, who maintained that the work made possible, and thus encouraged, an indiscriminate attitude toward word choices and writing style. Kendall correctly notes that this judgment demands too much from the book and too little from its users.

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) considered himself a man of three lives: one as an ethnic Pole born in the Ukraine who lived the early part of his life in what is now Poland; one as a widely traveled seaman; and another as a writer in England. A master of reinventing himself, Conrad occasionally applied his fiction-writing skills to autobiography. To further complicate matters, some of those close to him gave inaccurate accounts of his life. John Stape, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad and co-editor of two volumes of The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, is the ideal biographer for such a complex subject. An intrepid researcher, Stape debunks some Conradian myths in his latest book, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad.

An orphan by his teens, Conrad decided to go to sea, inspired by sea novels and youthful rebellion. During this period he read widely and developed two defining lifelong characteristics: acute observation skills and a habit of living beyond his means. Of particular interest are Stape’s exploration of Conrad’s travels as sources for his later novels and stories; for example, his 1890 trip to the Congo inspired his most famous tale, Heart of Darkness. As Stape writes, “His experience of the depths of rapacity, inhumanity, and cynicism was to alter his views of life forever, and his contact with the climate permanently damaged his health.” Stape deals with the related questions of why Conrad became a writer and why he decided to write in English (his third language after Polish and French), dismissing Conrad’s insistence that he just sat down one day and started to write. Though Conrad’s extraordinary talent was recognized by many in literary circles early in his career, it would be years before he gained a significant readership. Conrad’s relationships with publishers and his close friendships with Stephen Crane and John Galsworthy are also discussed.

This authoritative and insightful book should be appreciated by all who enjoy Conrad’s work, as well as readers who like good biography.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller.