Imaginative Conservatism: The Letters of Russell Kirk
A prolific author and wise cultural critic, Russell Kirk kept up a steady stream of correspondence with friends and colleagues throughout the world, but these letters have never been published until now. In Imaginative Conservatism: The Letters of Russell Kirk, editor James E. Person, Jr. presents for the first time 190 of Dr. Kirk’s most provocative and insightful letters. Published by the University of Kentucky Press in 2018, the collection includes correspondence between Kirk and prominent figures T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., Ray Bradbury, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Charlton Heston, Nikolai Tolstoy, Wendell Berry, Richard Nixon, and Herbert Hoover, among many others. In addition, there are letters to less famous but no less significant friends, family members, colleagues, students, and ordinary readers of Dr. Kirk’s syndicated column. The volume provides insight not only to substantial autobiographical information, but to the twentieth century’s influential interpreters of American political and culture.
In National Review, Gerald Russello wrote that the publication of this collection of Kirk’s considerable correspondence “it is a great service to American intellectual history generally and to that of conservatism in particular.” The full review can be found here:
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/05/28/little-money-but-good-canoeing/
More From Our Highlights & News
The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) Participant Writes Article on Visiting the Kirk Center for National Review
We hope you enjoy this essay from recent seminar participant, Bobby Miller: Kirk’s life was consumed with the recuperation and preservation of what he called ‘permanent things.’ As he put it: ‘There are certain permanent things in society: the health of the family,...
Interns from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy gathered at the Kirk Center
Interns from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy gathered at the Kirk Center on July 8, 2022, for a day-long seminar on “Dimensions of Contemporary Conservatism.” Faculty speakers included Dr. Glenn Moots from Northwood University and Dr. Sarah Estelle from Hope...
Dr. Luke C. Sheahan appointed the fifth editor of The University Bookman
On November 7, 2021, the Russell Kirk Center’s flagship publication, The University Bookman, lost its longtime editor, Gerald J. Russello, to cancer. Gerald was just 50 yet had been a fixture in our world, with such a breadth of humanistic learning and a deep...
What Do Students Say about the Center?
April was a busy month of programming at the Kirk Center. Of the four educational programs we held, two were four-day seminars for graduate and undergraduate students, while the other two were shorter programs for students from Calvin University and from St. Michael’s...