The Secret Agent, A Drama in Three Acts
Price: $550.00
Hard Cover. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1923. Limited. Near Fine.
Limited first edition, first printing. One of 1,000 copies numbered signed by the author, this being number 355. Publisher's quarter white paper over gray-green paper covered boards, with white spine label lettered in brown, fore and bottom edges untrimmed, frontispiece of Conrad taken from a portrait by Malcolm Arbuthnot; in the original gray-green dust jacket with paper spine label lettered in brown. Near fine book, with very light toning to spine and board edges, a touch of tape residue and offsetting to head of spine and top right corner of front board, light offsetting and a few short closed tears to endpapers, Efrem Zimbalist bookplate to front pastedown; in a very good unclipped dust jacket, with some toning to spine and panel edges, light wear to head of spine, small split to bottom of front spine joint, two small closed tears to top edge of front panel, light creasing to bottom right corner of front panel, small blemish to rear panel, small closed tear to bottom edge of inner front flap, and old tape repair to verso of head of spine. Overall, an excellent copy with a fresh and clean interior. The Secret Agent is a dramatic adaptation of Conrad's 1907 novel of the same name. The story is set in London in 1866 and features the spy Mr. Verloc, who is also a member of an anarchist group with terrorist inclinations. In a plot loosely inspired by the Greenwich Bombing of 1894 carried out by French anarchist Martial Bourdin, Verloc finds his two positions overlapping when he is challenged by the government to destroy the Greenwich Observatory as a means to secure public support for the suppression of anarchy. Conrad's dramatic adaptation of The Secret Agent was first produced in London at the Ambassadors Theatre on November 2, 1922. Notably, this popular thriller served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 film Sabotage, which starred Sylvia Sidney and Oskar Homolka. A precursor to modern spy fiction, The Secret Agent is a Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone. This copy of The Secret Agent was previously owned by Efrem Zimbalist (1889-1985), an early 20th century world-class Russian violinist who later served as director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Item #JC086
