The Bram Stoker Society

THE BRAM STOKER SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
October 2009

THIRTY YEARS A-GOING

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.

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Thirty Years A-Going: A History of the Bram Stoker Society
by Albert Power
Bram Stoker Series #0

Printings: October 2009 (125)
Style: A5, staple-bound pamphlet
Length: 20 pages

"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.

THE BRAM STOKER SERIES

The Bram Stoker Series will available from the Swan River Press by subscription only toward then end of 2009. Subscribers will receive each of the three titles shortly after their respective publication dates. Individual titles may be made available at a later date at a higher cost per title. Details to follow . . .

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Four Romances by Mr. Bram Stoker
Introduced by Paul Murray
Bram Stoker Series #1

Printings: January 2010 (125)
Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet
Length: 40 pages

"While the stories that make up this collection are not among Stoker's best, they do cast an interesting light on the psyche of their creator. His lifelong concerns, anxieties, obsessions and ambiguities would cohere into the masterpiece that is Dracula in the 1890s but his other work, including these stories, shine a revealing light into the mind of its creator, a mind more profound, if also more troubled, than has generally been realised."

Here collected for the first time since their original publication in periodicals, these four romances display a side of Bram Stoker's writing somewhat less familiar to modern readers. Even so, these tales are not quite devoid of the elements we have come to expect from the master of horror, mystery, cruelty and black humour. Spanning Stoker's literary career, this volume reprints "Greater Love" (1914), "Our New House" (1886), "A Yellow Duster" (1899) and "The Way of Peace" (1909). Rounding out the collection is an introduction by Stoker biographer Paul Murray and a never before printed essay, "Rules for Domestic Happiness", by Charlotte M. B. Stoker — Bram's mother, who is often credited with instilling in the young author an early sense of fatalism and the macabre.

Bram Stoker's Other Gothics--Contemporary Reviews
Introduced by Carol A. Senf
Bram Stoker Series #2

Printings: April 2010 (125)
Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet
Length:36 pages

"Just as I would recommend any of Stoker's works, these reviews serve as a reminder that Stoker's literary legacy is substantially more than just Dracula, still his best-known work. These reviews, most of them now in print for the first time in over a century, provide fresh insights into Bram Stoker as an author who dabbled in the popular genres available to writers at the turn of the twentieth century, and who made the Gothic genre his own, not only in Dracula, but in other works that today are not as well known as they deserve to be."

Collected here are a selection of reviews of Stoker's works that are generally classified under the broad heading of Gothic: Under the Sunset (1882), The Snake's Pass (1890), The Mystery of the Sea (1902), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). Assembled from the list provided by Richard Dalby and William Hughes in their Bram Stoker: A Bibliography (Essex: Desert Island Books, 2004), these reviews appeared in many of the leading publications of their day, including The Spectator, Punch, The Academy, and The Athenaeum as well as in more specialised journals such as The Dial, The Bookman, The Reader Magazine.

Extracts from Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving by Bram Stoker
Selected and Introduced by Elizabeth Miller
Bram Stoker Series #3

Printings: November 2010 (125)
Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet
Length: 28 pages

"Henry Irving had died in 1905. Born John Brodribb in a Somerset village in 1838, he was the son of a travelling salesman. He would become one of the best known figures in London, and the first actor be be honoured with a knighthood. He acquired the Lyceum Theatre in 1878 and quickly hired Bram Stoker (then living in his native Dublin) to join him as Acting Manager. Stoker was immediately swept into a whirlwind of activity on which he thrived: seasons in London, provincial tours, and eight North American tours. Biographers concur that Henry Irving was the single greatest influence on Stoker's life."

Bram Stoker's tribute to his late, former employer in Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906) proved to be one of his most successful books during Stoker's lifetime. While Dracula has since surpassed Personal Reminiscences in popularity, the latter title contains many fascinating accounts central to the author’s life. Selected and introduced by Elizabeth Miller, this booklet features the most interesting portions of Stoker's semi-autobiographical account. Extracts focus on Stoker's early meetings with Irving, anecdotes from his years managing the Lyceum Theatre in London, and his association with many of the famous people of his day including Whitman, Gladstone, Tennyson, Browning, Vambéry and Liszt. The volume also includes excerpts from five contemporary reviews.