Lud Heat, subtitled A Book of Dead Hamlets May 1974 to April 1975, was first published by Sinclair's own small press, Albion Village, in 1975. Although presented as a poetry book, Lud Heat combines, in a complex collage, passages of verse and prose, autobiography and fiction, history and myth, criticism and social realism. Little noticed at the time of its publication – unsurprisingly given its very small print run – it has gained some posthumous fame by virtue of Sinclair's subsequent success as a novelist and essayist, and because of Peter Ackroyd's heavy borrowings from its first section for his bestselling novel, Hawksmoor. With the growing interest in his writing, Vintage finally republished the book in 1995, in a single volume with Suicide Bridge (1979).
The book is built around a series of obsessions...
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Citation: Cunningham, David. "Lud Heat". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3810, accessed 05 December 2025.]
