Russell Kirk’s Moral Imagination

The publication of Camilo Peralta’s The Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination by Vernon Press is an exciting development. Peralta is part of a rising generation of scholars and completed his doctoral work at Faulkner University and spent time at Piety Hill as both a Russell Kirk seminar attendee and a research fellow in the Kirk Center’s Wilbur Fellow program. Kirk’s position in mid-20th-century intellectual conservatism has proved a crucial part of building the modern conservative movement, and additional scholarship on Kirk contributes to the prestige of the Sage of Piety Hill. At $78 for the hardback and $100 for the ebook, The Wizard of Mecosta, however, is priced for academic libraries and will be of interest to academics with a research interest in Russell Kirk, 20th-century Gothic literature, and T.S. Eliot.