Secret Agent

The Secret Agent (1907) is a compelling tale of espionage and terrorism set in Edwardian London. Ironically subtitled ''A Simple Tale'', it paints a terrifying portrait of revolutionaries and anarchists whose personal lives are as barren and futile as their public acts of violence. It concludes with the unwitting accomplice of a would-be terrorist blowing himself to bits with his own bomb, the terrorist''s subsequent murder by his own wife, and the wife''s own suicide. This new edition is based on a painstaking comparison of the original manuscript of the work with its first, truncated appearance in the American magazine Ridgeway''s: A Militant Weekly for God and Country, and with all subsequent book-form publications overseen by Conrad himself. The result is a new text, purged of the printers'' errors and editorial interventions that have been reproduced in all previous printings. There is also a critical introduction, an essay on the text, a textual apparatus, and helpful explanatory notes.