The Bedeviled (First Limited Edition, Signed and Numbered)

CULLINAN, Thomas. The Bedeviled. Lakewood, Colorado: Centipede Press, 2020.

Octavo. Original publisher's cloth, two-colour foil blocking to front cover. Colour pictorial dust jacket. Ribbon marker. Head and tail bands. Smyth-sewn binding. 312, [i: limitation] pp., illustrated throughout with colour and black-and-white artwork by Christopher Shy. With facsimile signature by Thomas Cullinan, rare photographs of the author, and reproductions of earlier editions. Introduction by Thomas W. Cullinan. Limited edition, number 32 of 300 copies. Signed by Thomas W. Cullinan and Christopher Shy.

Thomas Cullinan occupies a curious position in the history of American popular fiction. His novel The Beguiled — a psychological Gothic set during the Civil War, in which a wounded Union soldier takes refuge in a Confederate girls' school with increasingly dark consequences — was published in 1966, filmed in 1971 with Clint Eastwood under the direction of Don Siegel, and filmed again in 2017 by Sofia Coppola with Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell. It has never quite left the cultural consciousness. The Bedeviled, published in 1978, is his other significant contribution to the literature of the uncanny: a tale of Satanism, possession, and family horror in which a New York couple inherit an Ohio farmhouse once owned by a Civil War general reputed to have been a Satanist, and discover that his influence has not diminished with his death. The New York Times called it suspenseful, noting that Cullinan never takes the easy way out; Publishers Weekly described it as horror that should keep exorcism fans up all night. It is, in the best tradition of 1970s occult fiction — the tradition of The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby — a slow-burning and genuinely disquieting piece of work, here presented in Centipede Press's handsome limited edition with new artwork by Christopher Shy, a new introduction by the author's son Thomas W. Cullinan, rare photographs of the author, and reproductions of earlier editions. The edition is now out of print.

Fine. Impeccably preserved, free from imperfection and presenting as new.

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Catalogue Number: HH000446