The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk

The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk

A classic, enchanting document of Scottish folklore about fairies, elves, and other supernatural creatures.

Late in the seventeenth century, Robert Kirk, an Episcopalian minister in the Scottish Highlands, set out to collect his parishioners' many striking stories about elves, fairies, fauns, doppelg ngers, wraiths, and other beings of, in Kirk's words, "a middle nature betwixt man and angel." For Kirk these stories constituted strong evidence for the reality of a supernatural world, existing parallel to ours, which, he passionately believed, demanded exploration as much as the New World across the seas. Kirk defended these views in The Secret Commonwealth, an essay that was left in manuscript when he died in 1692. It is a rare and fascinating work, an extraordinary amalgam of science, religion, and folklore, suffused with the spirit of active curiosity and bemused wonder that fills Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and the works of Sir Thomas Browne. The Secret Commonwealth is not only a remarkable document in the history of ideas but a study of enchantment that enchants in its own right.


First published in 1815 by Sir Walter Scott, then reedited in 1893 by Andrew Lang, with a dedication to Robert Louis Stevenson, The Secret Commonwealth has long been difficult to obtain-available, if at all, only in scholarly editions. This new edition modernizes the spelling and punctuation of Kirk's little book and features a wide-ranging and illuminating introduction by the critic and historian Marina Warner, who brings out the originality of Kirk's contribution and reflects on the ongoing life of fairies in the modern mind.

Kirk, Robert: - Robert Kirk BScn (Econ) FCA CPA qualified as a charted accountant in Belfast with Price Waterhouse & Co., and spent two years in industry and a further four years in practice. In 1980 he was appointed director of a private teaching college in Dublin where he specialised in the teaching of financial accounting subjects. He later moved into the university sector and is currently Professor of Financial Reporting in the the School of Accounting at the University of Ulster. He also presents continuing professional education courses for various institutes across the UK and Ireland.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781681373560
ISBN 10	1681373564
Title	The Secret Commonwealth
Author	Robert Kirk
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The New York Review of Books, Inc
Year published	2019-05-14
Number of pages	144
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.