Literature / Politics
Russell Kirk
1918–1994 · political theorist, historian, man of letters, novelist
Author of The Conservative Mind, a founding text of postwar American conservatism, born and raised in the metro Detroit railroad town of Plymouth.
- Born
Plymouth, Michigan- Died
Mecosta, Michigan
aged 75- Birth name
- Russell Amos Kirk
- Also known as
- Sage of Mecosta
- Detroit years
- 1918–1936
- Field
- Literature, Politics
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Kirk was born in 1918 in Plymouth, a small railroad town in western Wayne County that is now part of metro Detroit; his father was a locomotive engineer. He grew up there before studying at Michigan State and Duke and serving in the Army in World War II. His Scottish doctorate became The Conservative Mind (1953), the book that gave traditionalist conservatism its intellectual pedigree. He then left academia and settled in Mecosta, in the northern Lower Peninsula, where his house Piety Hill became a gathering place for writers and students and later home of the Russell Kirk Center. Kirk was also a respected author of ghost stories, several of them set in rural Michigan.
Highlights
- The Conservative Mind (1953) shaped postwar American conservatism
- Presidential Citizens Medal (1989)
- Award-winning ghost-story writer; many tales set in Michigan
- Founded the journals Modern Age (1957) and The University Bookman
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Memorial · 2018 (birth centennial)
Russell Kirk historical marker
Friends of Kirk crowdfunded a historical marker in his birthplace, Plymouth, for the 2018 centennial of his birth.