The Bram Stoker Society - September 2009

THE BRAM STOKER SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
September 2009

"THE SEQUEL TO ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL NOVELS OF ALL TIME"

Available 13 October 2009:

"At last—the sequel to Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula.

"Bram Stoker's Dracula is the prototypical horror novel, an inspiration for the world's seemingly limitless fascination with vampires. Though many have tried to replicate Stoker's horror classic-in books, television shows, and movies, only the 1931 Bela Lugosi film bore the Stoker family's support. Until now.

"Dracula The Un-Dead, by Dacre Stoker (Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew) and Ian Holt, is a bone-chilling sequel based on Bram Stoker's own handwritten notes for characters and plot threads excised from the original edition. Written with the blessing and cooperation of Stoker family members, Dracula The Un-Dead begins in 1912, twenty-five years after Dracula "crumbled into dust." Van Helsing's protégé, Dr. Jack Seward, is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. Meanwhile, an unknowing Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and Mina, leaves law school for the London stage, only to stumble upon the troubled production of "Dracula," directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself.

"The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents' terrible secrets, but before he can confront them he experiences evil in a way he had never imagined. One by one, the band of heroes that defeated Dracula a quarter-century ago is being hunted down. Could it be that Dracula somehow survived their attack and is seeking revenge? Or is their another force at work whose relentless purpose is to destroy anything and anyone associated with Dracula?

"Dracula The Un-Dead is deeply researched, rich in character, thrills and scares, and lovingly crafted as both an extension and celebration of one of the most classic popular novels in literature."

Dacre Stoker will be in Dublin, Ireland on 30 September to sign at Chapter's Bookshop on Parnell Street at 2.30pm. At 6.30pm he will appear at the Dublin City Library and Archives on Pearse Street to give a talk on his new book. On Thursday, 1 October at 8pm, Dacre will be at Ballyroan Library on Orchardstown Avenue, Rathfarnham. You can book your place by phoning the library at +353 1 494 1900.

More information on the book and Dacre and Ian's other public appearances can be found at: www.draculatheun-dead.com

* * *
THIRTY YEARS A-GOING: THE HISTORY OF THE BRAM STOKER SOCIETY

Available from The Swan River Press in October is a new booklet by Albert Power on the history of the Bram Stoker Society. The booklet will be offered at a reduced rate of 1.50 euro to cover postage and packaging.

"It was on a raw January evening in 1980, at a public meeting held in the darkling pile of Trinity College Dublin's graduates memorial building, with its ample expanse of grey frontage, high windows and maw-like entrance led up to by a flight of stone steps, that the sturdy first steps to set up the Bram Stoker Society were taken. The date was January 10th and the event had been organised by the college Philosophical Society, of which Bram Stoker had been President in 1869-1870."

Albert Power was present at the January 1980 inaugural meeting of the Bram Stoker Society in Trinity College as a rapt undergraduate. Now, at the dawn of an exciting new chapter in the society's history, he paints a personal picture of its uneven, sometimes unsettled growth - from the heady days of the early 1980s when a plaque was installed on premises lived in by Bram Stoker on Dublin's Kildare Street; through the short fraught association with Trinity College's Philosophical Society; the thirteen years of the journal; the Bram Stoker Club; fraternal links with the Clontarf-centred annual Bram Stoker Summer School; to the death of the society's founder and chairman, Leslie Shepard, in August 2004. The narrative concludes with a putative pencil sketch for the future.

* * *