CONRAD, Joseph (1857-1924). The Secret Agent, New York, 1907, 8vo, some staining, original cloth. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, IMPORTANT PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed on the front free endpaper, "Miss Hallowes from her friend the Author. 1907."

CONRAD, Joseph (1857-1924).  The Secret Agent. A Simple Tale. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, [September] 1907. 8vo (187 x 125mm). Title printed in orange and black in single rule border with orange printer's device, "half title" following the title (some heavy staining to the endpapers and preliminaries including the page with the presentation inscription, light stain to corner of p.352, occasional light mainly marginal spotting and staining). Original pale blue decorated cloth (faded, some staining including darker stain to the upper cover, spine discoloured, inner hinges broken, shaken). Provenance: The Property of a Collector. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, with "Printed in U. S. of America" stamped on the verso of the title beneath the copyright panel. IMPORTANT PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed on the front free endpaper, "Miss Hallowes from her friend the Author. 1907." [Please see the note relating to Lilian Hallowes in the previous lot.] "The Secret Agent ... is ... indubitably a classic and a masterpiece ... [It] is truly classical in its maturity of attitude and the consummateness of the art in which this finds expression ... The irony of The Secret Agent is not a matter of an insistent and obvious 'significance' of tone, or the endless repetition of a simple formula. The tone is truly subtle - subtle with the theme; and the theme develops itself in a complex organic structure. The effect depends upon an interplay of contrasting moral perspectives, and the rich economy of the pattern they make relates The Secret Agent to Nostromo: the two works, for all the great differences between them in range and temper, are triumphs of the same art" (F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition). Barzun & Taylor 903 A Catalogue of Crime: "... the earliest and best novel portraying the character and fate of a double agent ..."; Cagle A12b; Connolly The Modern Movement 15: "The Secret Agent depicts the atmosphere of Edwardian London in a psychological thriller of the anarchist underworld. Conrad's wit and chivalrous magnanimity are at their airiest in this novel (beloved of Dr Leavis) which is more influential though less grandly Flaubertian than Nostromo ... [I]t contains Conrad's greatest heroine ..."; Ehrsam p.304; Hubin Crime Fiction IV, p.332; Modern Library Top 100 46; Smith 13; Wise 17: "The First American Edition of The Secret Agent was published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers in September 1907. The novel was serialised in America in Ridgeway's Weekly from October 6th, 1906 to January 12th, 1907, inclusive, but did not appear serially in this country [i.e. the UK]."