The Secret Agent. A Simple Tale.

Hard cover, 8vo, in publisher's red cloth with black and orange illustration to front showing a distressed "secret agent" over his symbol of the triangle, encased in a circle of fire. Black slipcase has the same triangle and fire in silver. With 7 full page illustrations by Manchester, England graphic artist Ben Jones, using a combination of printmaking and collage. xxiv [2] 270pp. **CONDITION : Fine, as new, in Fine slipcase.** Polish-British author Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is well known for his tales of colonial and maritime misadventure: steamy jungles and riverboats serving a nation's trading quests. But "The Secret Agent" (1907) is set in the capital of his adopted England, in a London plagued by the fog of industrial-age coal-fires, and streets lit by gas lamps. Like Joyce's "Ulysses", this modernist crime novel follows the perspective of a handful of characters and their inner dialogues. At the heart of it is the "secret agent", Verloc, who is ordered by his foreign employer to provoke an act of terror in London; this to be carried out by the anarchist associates he has infiltrated, thus upending his usually sedentary, pamphlet-producing life, propelling him and his family into the world of actions, and consequences. The modern introduction by Will Self is best read after the novel, as it sheds light on Conrad's use of both language and plot.…