Popular Accounts of the Greenwich Bombing

Abstract

In order to explore the contemporary context of Conrad’s novel, the commentary on the bombing at the heart of The Secret Agent is explored here through press accounts of the event in popular newspapers, accounts from anarchist sources (with a focus on the Nicoll pamphlet), and finally an “anarchist” perspective in the debut novel, A Girl Among the Anarchists, by the Rosetti sisters, Helen and Olive, under the pseudonym Isabel Meredith, comparing the Rosetti account with Nicoll’s pamphlet. The sources are evaluated and compared to The Secret Agent, and then they are considered for Conrad’s likely access to them.