The Black Fox

A neglected twentieth-century classic, chilling and literary, returning to print for the first time since the 1950s. 

Heard was a fascinating author of genre fiction, speculative works on the existence of flying saucers, and influential tracts on philosophical enlightenment. Deserving of more recognition, The Black Fox takes the antiquarian influence of M. R. James, but with a modern sensibility, where the Christian church meets the pagan gods of distant cultures.

When the aspiring Canon Throcton is passed up for promotion to Dean of the Cathedral in favor of his rival Canon Simpkins, a faint knell of disorder rings out over the Close. Believing that suspicions over his scholarly work on Hebrew and Arabian mysticism led to his snubbing, Throcton nurses his pride with an experiment – the invocation of a simple curse, popular in the East in ancient times, but surely no more than an antiquated trifle in the reign of Victoria? And yet a dark force answers the call,something bestial and immortal, dragging pestilential vengeance and corruption to the very heart of the Cathedral.
 

Gerald Heard was one of the pennames of Henry Fitzgerald Heard (1899–1971), an author, mystic, BBC science broadcaster and scholar of religion and philosophy. Heard was born to Anglo-Irish parents in London, and moved to California with his partner Christopher Wood, and friend Aldous Huxley, in 1937. His popular strange short stories were collected in The Grey Fog and The Lost Cavern, and he also wrote well-regarded crime novels such as A Taste for Honey, starring Mr. Mycroft as detective.