The Secret Agent (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

de Joseph Conrad (auteur), Steven Marcus (introduction), Tatiana M. Holway (introduction et notes), Tatiana M. Holway (introduction)

Maison d'édition : Barnes & Noble Classics

juin 2009

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Résumé

The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
Biographies of the authors
Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
Footnotes and endnotes
Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
Comments by other famous authors
Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations
Bibliographies for further reading
Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.

Set in early twentieth-century London and inspired by an actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent is a complex exploration of motivation and morality. The title character, Adolf Verloc, is obviously no James Bond. In fact, he and his circle of misfit saboteurs are not spies but terrorists, driven less by political ideals than by their unruly emotions and irrational hatreds.

Verloc has settled into an apparent marriage of convenience. Family life gives him a respectable cover, while his wife hopes to get help in handling her halfwit brother, Stevie. Instead Verloc involves Stevie in one of his explosive schemes, an act that leads to violence, murder, and revenge.

Darkly comic, the novel is also obliquely autobiographical: Joseph Conrad’s parents were involved in the radical politics of their time, and their early deaths left him profoundly distrustful of any sort of political action.

Steven Marcus is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, and a specialist in nineteenth-century literature and culture. He is the author of more than 200 publications.

Auteur

Joseph Conrad (auteur)

Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, dit Joseph Conrad ( 1857-1924), issu de la noblesse polonaise, a servi vingt années dans la marine marchande française et britannique, avant de publier en 1895 son premier roman en anglais, La Folie Almayer . Il sera suivi de nombreuses nouvelles, de textes autobiographiques et de romans d'aventure non conventionnels devenus des classiques, introduisant dans les lettres anglaises une sensibilité nouvelle, ainsi qu'une vision crépusculaire du colonialisme : Le Nègre du Narcisse (1897), Au cœur des ténèbres (1899), Lord Jim (1900), Typhon (1903), mais aussi des romans d'espionnage ( L'Agent secret , 1907). Héritier de Melville, admiré de Jack London, il acquiert en France une grande notoriété grâce à ses traducteurs, André Gide et G. Jean-Aubry.