Description
EXTRAORDINARY AND MOST RARE INSCRIBED PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION OF CONRAD’S THE SECRET AGENT
CONRAD, Joseph. The Secret Agent. A Simple Tale. London: Methuen, 1907. Octavo, original red cloth gilt. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.
Rare presentation copy of one of Conrad’s greatest masterpieces, his “brilliant novelistic study of terrorism” written at the dawn of the modern age. This copy inscribed by Conrad in the year of publication: “To Mr. & Mrs. Hope with great affection from the author, Sept. 1907.” Recipient G.F.W. Hope was Conrad’s lifelong sailing friend, served as a model for characters in several Conrad stories, and he and his wife were the dedicatees of Lord Jim and were described by Conrad as “the nearest relations he had in the world.”
Joseph Conrad’s “Secret Agent remains the most brilliant novelistic study of terrorism as viewed from the blood-spattered outside.” Written “during the first great terrorist wave of modern times,” after the assassination of two American presidents and prominent leaders across France, Spain, Austria and Italy (New York Times), this “‘Simple Tale’ is a masterpiece of grim irony, concerned with anarchism in a densely evoked late 19th-century London… Conrad takes a melodramatic story but treats it with great subtlety, psychological insight and dry humor” (Parker, 30). The Secret Agent provided a key inspiration for Graham Greene and served as the basis for numerous film adaptations. With rear advertisements dated September 1907. Title page with second line of imprint: “W.C.” (instead of variant “W C.”), no priority established. As issued without dust jacket. Cagle A12a. Connolly, Modern Movement 15. Wise 17. Recipient G.F.W. Hope (1854-1930) was a lifelong non-literary friend of Conrad, whom the author first met in January 1880 through the sailing agent James Sutherland, after he had left the Europa and was renting a flat in North London. Hope was a merchant navy officer and, later, director of numerous companies. He had, like Conrad, served on the Duke of Sutherland (although at different times). Hope was fond of cigars and yachting, and owned a cruising yawl Nellie, immortalized in “Heart of Darkness.” With his friends W.B. Keen (an accountant) and T.L. Mears (a lawyer), Hope provided Conrad with the models for the group of listeners in the frame-narratives of “Youth” and “Heart of Darkness”—in the latter Hope was the model for the “Director of Companies.” Although Hope and Conrad had no mutual intellectual interests Conrad clearly felt very close to him and maintained his friendship with Hope after the author began to move in literary circles.
In 1886 Hope was one of Conrad’s sureties when he became a British subject and, after the death of Conrad’s uncle in 1895, the author told his future wife that “Mr. and Mrs. Hope, as far as feeling could go, were the nearest relations he had in the world” (see Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad as I Knew Him). In 1896 he was one of the witnesses for Conrad’s wedding, and the Conrads settled initially in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, in order to be close neighbors of the Hopes, and the two men continued their tradition of regular sailing on the nearby Thames. It is not known what part exactly Hope played in Conrad’s financial disaster of 1896, when he lost his shares in a South African gold mine, though it appears Hope was the “unfortunate friend” referred to in the letters who suffered similarly when the venture collapsed. When the Conrads moved from Stanford in 1898 they never lost contact with their friends. Conrad dedicated Lord Jim to them in 1900 (“With grateful affection after many years of friendship”); he also completed his great novel Nostromo in their Stanford home in August 1904. Earlier, in 1890, the Hopes had named one of their sons Conrad. Later small bookplate.
Slightest of toning to spine, gilt bright, just a few minuscule rubs to extremities. A beautiful copy, most rare and desirable presented to by Conrad to his lifelong friend.
