Announcing the Suntup Classic Edition of THE HELLBOUND HEART—Signed by Clive Barker

21st Dec 2025

Suntup Editions may have exceeded even their near-insurmountable standards with the letterpress edition of Clive Barker's legendary novella, The Hellbound Heart.

The Classic Edition includes, among other enhancements, fourteen color illustrations by Clive, and is signed by him, as well.

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As intense and disturbing as it is impossible to put down, The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker is a landmark work of modern horror—one that redefined the genre on its publication and continues to unsettle readers decades later.

When Frank Cotton’s dark appetites for pleasure and pain push him beyond moral and physical limits, a mysterious puzzle box becomes his gateway into a nightmarish netherworld inhabited by the Cenobites—extradimensional beings who traffic in experiences so extreme that the boundaries between ecstasy and agony dissolve. After Frank’s catastrophic fate, one woman remains obsessed with him: his brother’s wife, Julia, whose devotion drives her to acts of shocking brutality as she attempts to restore Frank piece by piece, no matter the human cost. 

First published in November 1986 by Dark Harvest in the third volume of its Night Visions anthology series, The Hellbound Heart was instantly praised by critics and readers alike as a groundbreaking achievement in horror fiction. Its impact only deepened when it was adapted into the 1987 film Hellraiser, also written and directed by Barker. The film’s success cemented the story’s place in popular culture and spawned multiple film sequels, before HarperPaperbacks issued the work as a standalone edition in 1991.

At once brutal and strangely intimate, this nerve-shattering novella is as much a meditation on obsession, longing, and the boundaries of the human heart as it is a work of pure horror. Unflinching in its vision and relentless in its execution, The Hellbound Heart endures as Barker’s masterwork of terror. 

CLASSIC EDITION

  • 6" x 9½" trim size.
  • 176 Pages.
  • Limited to 1250 copies.
  • Signed by Clive Barker, Dave McKean and Kirk Reinert.
  • Fourteen color illustrations by Clive Barker. 
  • New exclusive afterword by Phil and Sarah Stokes.
  • Double sided dust jacket featuring exclusive new artwork by Dave McKean for this edition, with Kirk Reinert’s first edition artwork gracing the reverse.
  • Bonus material includes reproduction of Kirk Reinert’s first edition artwork, sketches of the Cenobite by Clive Barker, as well as scans of pages from the handwritten and typewritten manuscript.
  • Full cloth binding.  
  • Foil blocked cover and spine.
  • Designed, cast in metal and printed letterpress from metal type on Mohawk Superfine paper by David Wolfe at Wolfe Editions in Portland, Maine.
  • Text pages set in Monotype Plantin. Titling faces are Castellar designed by John Peters and Caledonia designed by W.A. Dwiggins.
  • Press work was accomplished on a Nebiolo cylinder press.
  • Endsheets are embossed Rainbow.
  • Housed in a cloth-covered slipcase with endcaps and foil blocking on the spine and sides. 
  • Bookmark with all pre-orders.