Collins Classics - The Secret Agent

by JosephConrad (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $4.17

  HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

  `They swarmed numerous like locusts, industrious like ants, thoughtless like a natural force, pushing on blind and orderly and absorbed, impervious to sentiment, to logic - to terror, too, perhaps.'

  Considered one of Conrad's most political works, The Secret Agent is set against the dismal backdrop of a drab and alienating London, and tells the story of the bombing of Greenwich Observatory by a group of anarchists.

  Shopkeeper, spy and reluctant anarchist Mr Verloc becomes embroiled in this terrorist plot, exploiting his mentally disabled brother-in-law Stevie in the process, leading to tragic circumstances.

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $3.25

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $9.22

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW PEARL Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre of detective fiction with these three mesmerising stories of a young French eccentric named C. Auguste Dupin: 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' and 'The Purloined Letter'. Years later Dorothy Sayers would describe these tales as 'almost a complete manual of detective theory and practice'. Indeed, Poe's short mysteries inspired the creation of countless literary sleuths, among them Sherlock Holmes.Today the unique Dupin stories still stand out as utterly engrossing page-turners. This edition reproduces the definitive text of these stories and an introduction and appendix on 'The Earliest Detectives' by the novelist Matthew Pearl.