Gerald Bullett


Gerald William Bullett was a British man of letters. He was known as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, critic, poet and publisher. He wrote both supernatural fiction and some children's literature. A few of his books were published under the pseudonym Sebastian Fox.

Biography

Bullett was born in London, the son of businessman Robert Bullet and Ellen Bullett, and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. During the Second World War he worked for the BBC in London, and after the war was a radio broadcaster. Bullett also contributed to the Times Literary Supplement. Politically, Bullett described himself as a "liberal socialist" and claimed to detest "prudery, prohibition, blood sports, central heating, and literary tea parties". Bullett was also an anti-fascist, describing fascism as "gangsterism on a national scale"; he publicly backed the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War.
One of his novels was Mr. Godly Beside Himself, a humorous fantasy story about a modern man who exchanges places with his doppelgänger in fairyland. Brian Stableford likens Bullet's novel to other works of post First World War British fantasy, such as Stella Benson's Living Alone, and Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist.
Bullett was a great admirer of Walt Whitman, and wrote an essay on Whitman for the book Great Democrats by Alfred Barratt Brown. Here he described Whitman as "a man full-blooded and brotherly, unselfconscious in his democracy and genuinely at ease with all kinds and classes".
In 1926 Bullett established the publishing firm Gerald Howe Ltd. in partnership with Garfield Howe. The firm "issued a modest list of titles with a literary bent".
Bullett died in Chichester, West Sussex, on 3 January 1958.

Works

The Progress of Kay, A Series of Glimpses Mice and other poems The Street of the Eye and Nine Other Tales Mr Godly Beside Himself Walt Whitman: A Study and a Selection The Baker's Cart and Other Tales Modern English Fiction Seed of Israel: Tales from the English Bible The Spanish Caravel ; later The Happy Mariners
  • "Dreaming" – essayThe World in Bud and Other Tales Nicky Son of Egg The History of Egg Pandervil Germany Remember Mrs Munch Marden Fee Helen's Lovers and Other Tales I'll Tell You Everything, by Bullett and J. B. PriestleyThe Quick and The Dead Eden River The Bubble The Jury – filmed as The Last Man to Hang? in 1956The Snare of the Fowler: A Tragedy of Time & Chance, as by Sebastian FoxPoems in Pencil The Innocence of G. K. Chesterton The Bending Sickle – novelTwenty Four Tales When the Cat's Away A Man of Forty Winter Solstice The Elderbrook Brothers Judgment in Suspense – novelGeorge Eliot Men at High Table and The House of Strangers Poems Cricket in Heaven The English Mystics Sydney Smith, a Biography and a Selection The Trouble at Number Seven News From The Village – poemsThe Alderman's Son – novelWindows On A Vanished Time One Man's Poison, as by Sebastian FoxThe Daughters of Mrs Peacock Odd Woman Out, as by Sebastian FoxThe Peacock Brides Ten-Minute Tales and Some Others Collected Poems, selected by E. M. W. Tillyard

As editor

The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems Short Stories of To-day and Yesterday The Testament of Light – anthologyThe Pattern of Courtesy: An Anthology, Continuing the Testament of Light A Book of Good Faith – Montaigne: A Miscellany of Passages The Phœnix and Turtle The Jackdaw's Nest, A Fivefold Anthology Readings in English Literature: From Chaucer to Matthew Arnold
  • ''Silver Poets of the 16th Century''

As translator

  • ''The Golden Year of Fan Cheng-Ta: A Chinese Rural Sequence Rendered into English Verse''