8vo. Half-title; 40pp. publisher's advertisements dated September 1907. Original red cloth gilt (spine lightly sunned, small ring stain on upper cover with minor restoration); folding case.

FIRST EDITION of Conrad's psychological thriller, dedicated to H.G. Wells and inspired by the 1894 death of French anarchist Martial Bourdin, who was killed when explosives he was preparing to detonate in the Greenwich Observatory detonated prematurely. The Secret Agent would provide the source for the 1936 Alfred Hitchcock film Sabotage. Cagle A12a(1); Connolly, Modern Movement 15; Smith 13; Wise 17. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.