Of Kings and Things.
London: Strange Attractor Press, 2018. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. xl + 320pp. Light brown paper-covered boards with black crowned serpent design by Ania Goszczynska. B&W illustrations. Patterned endpapers. Bibliographic notes by Mark Valentine. This hardcover edition limited to 500 signed copies. This copy SIGNED on the title-page by David Tibet. Also included is a double-sided printed postcard, and a large canvas "tote bag" reproducing the fabulous cover design of his "Studies of Death" (1894). A collection of fifteen stories (including of those published in his collections "Studies of Death" and "Child of the Soul"), over thirty poems and two essays by the remarkable Count Stenbock, edited, gathered, and with an introductory essay by David Tibet. Afterword by Tim d’Arch Smith and a comprehensive bibliography by David Tibet, Ray Russell and Mark Valentine. From the pubisher: "Described by W. B. Yeats as a “scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men,” Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock (1860–1895) is surely the greatest exemplar of the Decadent movement of the late nineteenth century. A friend of Aubrey Beardsley, patron of the extraordinary pre-Raphaelite artist Simeon Solomon, and contemporary of Oscar Wilde, Stenbock died at the age of thirty-six as a result of his addiction to opium and his alcoholism, having published just three slim volumes of suicidal poetry and one collection of morbid short stories. Stenbock was a homosexual convert to Roman Catholicism and owner of a serpent, a toad, and a dachshund called Trixie. It was said that toward the end of his life he was accompanied everywhere by a life-size wooden doll that he believed to be his son. His poems and stories are replete with queer, supernatural, mystical, and Satanic themes; original editions of his books are highly sought by collectors of recherché literature." As New. Fine in Fine dust jacket, totebag unused. Item #69934
ISBN: 9781907222573
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