The Book of the Damned

The foundational text of Fortean literature, in the scarce 1974 Abacus first paperback edition — featuring the celebrated original cover art by Justin Todd.

Charles Fort spent decades cataloguing anomalous phenomena dismissed by mainstream science: rains of frogs, unexplained lights, teleportation, falls of unknown substances. His four books, of which this is the first and most famous, invented an entire genre. Fort coined the term 'damned' for the facts science refused to acknowledge.

Justin Todd was one of the most sought-after illustrators of the British paperback boom, producing meticulous gouache covers for Abacus, Panther, and Fontana across the 1970s. His work is now actively collected in its own right. This edition is desirable both as a Fort text and as a Todd cover — a combination that doesn't come up often.