The Surly Sullen Bell: Ten Stories and Sketches, Uncanny or Uncomfortable, with a Note on the Ghostly Tale
New York: Fleet Publishing Company, 1962. First edition. Octavo. Original blue cloth and dust jacket. Price-clipped dust jacket with light rubbing and short, internally mended tear at bottom edge of rear panel. Minor scuffing to page block. Fine in very good-plus dust jacket. Item #8
A bright copy of Russell Kirk’s (1918–1994) collection of traditional ghost stories. In addition to his status as a founding father of modern American conservatism, Kirk was a widely recognized writer of ghost stories in the classic tradition of celebrated storytellers M. R. James and H. Russell Wakefield. Kirk’s ghostly output included three novels—Old House of Fear (1961), A Creature of Twilight (1966), and Lord of the Hollow Dark (1989)—and twenty-two short stories. Like other conservative fiction writers of his era (including G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien), Kirk’s fictional works often contained conservative themes and undertones. And like Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien, Kirk would spend much of his life writing erudite works of political, philosophical, and religious thought in addition to speculative and ghostly fiction. Perhaps best remembered for his movement-defining book, The Conservative Mind (1953), Kirk is widely regarded as a leading light of modern American conservatism. Despite his legacy as a non-fiction writer and thinker, Kirk’s stories received praise from fiction giants T. S. Eliot, Robert Aickman, Madeleine L’Engle, and Ray Bradbury. The Surly Sullen Bell collects ten of Kirk’s shorter ghost stories as well as an essay on the writing of supernatural tales. Kirk prepared the anthology himself and, together with the Fleet Publishing Company, published the collection in 1962. The Surly Sullen Bell is filled with moldering farmsteads, crumbling cities, and ancient castles—and, of course, shadows, spirits, and ghosts. A handsome first edition of Kirk’s ghostly anthology of classical tales of the supernatural.
Price: $75.00