SOURCE: “The Era of Propaganda by Deed II: 1894-7,” in The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London, Croom Helm, 1983, 99-119.

In the following essay, Oliver details several prominent anarchist incidents of the 1890s, including the event that inspired Joseph Conrad's novel, The Secret Agent.

The Greenwich Park Explosion

The sole outrage that occurred in London, a bomb explosion outside the Greenwich Observatory in February 1894, killed the man carrying the bomb. It is probably best known because Conrad based his novel The Secret Agent on it. In his “author's note” to the novel, Conrad said that the subject came to him “in the shape of a few words uttered by a friend in a casual conversation about anarchists or rather anarchist activities”. His friend told him that the man carrying the bomb “was half an idiot” but “these were absolutely the only words that passed between us”. Conrad...