The Secret Agent, considered by scholar F. R. Leavis to be one of Joseph Conrad's two "supreme masterpieces," is a brilliantly ironic narrative depicting Edwardian London's seedy and dispossessed underworld of revolutionist and anarchists. Having been a Polish nationalist in exile, and having experience of working with revolutionists and espionage agents in Switzerland and Marseilles, Conrad was familiar with the tactics and rationalizations used by political agitators and terrorists. Moreover, he had become fascinated with the twilight world of international political activity in London - a haven for political exiles from Europe during the late nineteenth century - after he learned of an actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory in 1894. However, although The Secret Agent is ostensibly set in the 1880s, some critics have observed that in many respects the novel is more representative of Edwardian London at the time of its composition in...