The Black Fox

by Gerald Heard

The setting of The Black Fox is an English cathedral close of the eighteen seventies. Here Thorocton is a Canon--an ambitious scholar and orientalist who despises one of his colleagues and fears another. When Canon Simpkins wins preferement over him his resentment is so great that partly to resolve his hatred he looks up an ancient Arabic formula for destroying one's enemy. What follows his brief ritualistic act gives this story its name and dark pattern. how a superior force, available to the pure in heart, counteracts the murderous black magic

Genres: Horror, Fiction

275 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Gerald Heard, born in London on October 6, 1889, of Irish ancestry, was educated in England, taking honors in history and studying theology at the University of Cambridge. Following Cambridge, he worked for Lord Robson of Jesmond and later for Sir Horace Plunkett, founder of the Irish Agriculture Cooperative movement. Heard began lecturing from 1926 to 1929 at Oxford University's Board of Extra Mural Studies. In 1927 he began lecturing for South Place Ethical Society. From 1929 to 1930 he edited "The Realist," a monthly journal of scientific humanism whose sponsors included H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley, and Aldous Huxley. In 1929 he published The Ascent of Humanity, an essay on the philosophy of history that received the prestigious Hertz Prize by the British Academy. From 1930 to 1934 he served as the BBC's first science commentator, and from 1932 to 1942 he was a council member of the Society for Psychical Research.

In 1937 Gerald Heard came to the United States, accompanied by Aldous Huxley, after having been offered the chair of historical anthropology at Duke University. After delivering some lectures at Duke, Heard gave up the post and soon settled in California where from 1941 to 1942 he founded and oversaw the building of Trabuco College, a large facility where comparative-religion studies and practices flourished under Heard's visionary direction. Trabuco College, 30 years ahead of its time, was discontinued in 1947, and the vast properties were subsequently donated to the Vedanta Society of Southern California.

During the 1950s, Heard's main activities were writing and lecturing, along with an occasional television and radio appearance. His broad philosophical themes and scintillating oratorical style influenced many people and attracted a legion of interested persons. But chiefly he maintained a regular discipline of meditation for many years, as the core of his mature beliefs centered around the intentional evolution of consciousness.

A prolific writer, Heard penned some thirty-eight books, the most important of which are his pioneering academic works documenting the evolution of consciousness, including The Ascent of Humanity (1929), The Social Substance of Religion (1931), The Source of Civilization (1935), Pain, Sex and Time (1939), and his last book, The Five Ages of Man (1964). He also wrote several popular devotional books, including The Creed of Christ (1940) and Training for the Life of the Spirit (1941-42). Under the name H. F. Heard (H. F. for Henry FitzGerald, his given name), he wrote a number of mysteries and fantasies, including A Taste for Honey (1941) and The Great Fog and Other Weird Tales (1944). Following five years of illness, Gerald Heard peacefully passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California, on August 14, 1971.

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Trollope’s Barchester Towers crossed with M R James’ ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’, this is an entertaining tale of the supernatural set in an Anglican cathedral close in the 1870s.

A gifted scholar and cathedral canon is passed over for ecclesiastical promotion, leading him to use secrets taken from an ancient Arabic book to raise dark powers that he cannot control.

[Alan Boshier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Takes forever to tell a very thin tale; the preface warned that this was a book that starts slowly, but really it never gets going and is written in a verbose, pedantic style that had me skim reading from about halfway through.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can only second the judgment of Anthony Boucher in 1952: "Literarily and spiritually, the outstanding supernatural novel of at least the past decade."