The Bram Stoker Society - February 2011

THE BRAM STOKER SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
February 2011

BRAM STOKER CENTENARY

The year 2012 marks the centenary of the death of Bram Stoker. He died in London on 20 April 1912. Several events are being planned. Below is a list of current tentative plans. New information will be added as it becomes available.

12-14 April 2012
Stoker conference at Hull University (UK) and Whitby.
Conference information and call for papers now available here.

20 April 2012 (exact dates TBA, but include April 20)
"Vampires and/as Science"
Trinity College, Dublin
Organizer: Clemens Ruthner, ruthnerc@tcd.ie

5-6 July 2012
Stoker, Dracula and the Gothic
Department of English, Trinity College Dublin
Contact: Jarlath Killeen, killeej@tcd.ie
For the website click here
7 July 2012 (Saturday afternoon)
National Library of Ireland
Slide Presentation by Elizabeth Miller & Dacre Stoker

(With thanks to Elizabeth Miller.)

BRAM STOKER SERIES #2

Available now from The Swan River Press are three new Stoker booklets. Subscribers will receive each of the three titles shortly after their respective publication dates. Titles may be made available individually at a later date and at a higher cost per title.

* * * * *
Contemporary Reviews of "Dracula"
Introduced by Leah Moore and John Reppion
Bram Stoker Series #4

Printings: January 2011 (125)
Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet
Length: 36 pages

"Over the decades, as with so many other iconic stories, Dracula has fallen prey to numerous popularly held misconceptions. Until recently we had ourselves laboured under one such misconception: that Dracula was not well received by the reading public when it was first published. We believed it to have been something of a disappointment where sales where concerned; an overlooked treasure, ahead of its time, destined to be rediscovered at a later date... we also assumed that some of the subtler aspects of the novel, which give the post-modern reader satisfaction, might have gone over the heads of the nineteenth century audience. How could a stuffy Victorian possibly get pleasure from this book in the same way a twenty-first century reader might? Needless to say — as this volume of reviews demonstrates — we grossly underestimated not only the horror reader of 1897, but also, to some degree, Mr. Stoker himself."

Contemporary Reviews of "Dracula" collects together a selection of reviews of Stoker's seminal work shortly after it was published in England in 1897 and in America in 1899. These reviews — both complimentary and critical — give insight into Dracula's initial public reception, unmarred by decades of misconceptions, academic scrutiny and literary legendry. Assembled from the list provided by Richard Dalby and William Hughes in their Bram Stoker: A Bibliography, these reviews appeared in many of the leading publications of their day, including The Spectator, Punch, Vanity Fair, and The Athenaeum. The booklet includes an insightful introduction by Leah Moore and John Reppion, who faithfully adapted Dracula as a graphic novel; and also reproduces first edition US and UK covers, as well as two short reviews of Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914).

To My Dear Friend Hommy-Beg: The Great Friendship of Bram Stoker and Hall Caine
Introduced by Richard Dalby
Bram Stoker Series #5

Printings: April 2011 (125)
Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet
Length: 48 pages

"Hall Caine was an incredible literary phenomenon, becoming the richest and most popular novelist of the late Victorian and Edwardian era, greatly outselling all of his rivals from Henry James to Joseph Conrad. By the end of the twentieth century all of his novels were out-of-print, and ironically his major claim to fame now comes from being the dedicatee of Dracula, albeit under the disguised family nickname of "Hommy-Beg". It is a bizarre twist of fate that Bram Stoker is now so much more famous worldwide than Hall Caine — an unbelievable reversal of their roles one hundred years ago."

This booklet explores the intimate, lifelong friendship between Stoker and Caine in their own words. Accompanying an introduction by Stoker scholar Richard Dalby are rare and un-reprinted pieces including letters, extracts from Caine's autobiographical My Story (1908) and Stoker's Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906), Stoker's introductions to The Works of Hall Caine (1905) and hitherto unknown essay "The Ethics of Hall Caine" (1909), Caine's touching obituary to Stoker (1912), and a reproduction of Stoker's inscription to Caine in the latter's copy of Dracula — printed here for the first time.

The Definitive Judge's House
Introduction and frontpiece by Mike Mignola
Endnotes and afterword by Jack G. Voller
Bram Stoker Series #6

Printings: December 2011 (150)
Style: A5, hand-sewn pamphlet
Length: 36 pages

"I was probably about thirteen years old when I read Dracula for the first time. I have no idea why. I ordered it from one of those little book catalogues you used to get in school. I shudder to think what would have happened if, instead, I'd tried to read Frankenstein at that age. It surely must have been in the same catalogue. Maybe I'd be an accountant now. Nothing against Frankenstein, but I know me, and I know it would not have hooked me through the eyeball (and brain) the way Dracula did. I distinctly remember finishing the book and thinking, 'Well, this is it. I have found my thing.' It’s like finding that city or, if you’re very lucky, that house where you know you want to spend the rest of your life. And that's pretty much what I've done."

Just in time for Christmas comes the definitive edition of Stoker's famous haunted house story, "The Judge's House". This facsimile edition, celebrating the 120th anniversary of the tale's first appearance, reproduces the text from Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914). And especially for the occasion, Mike Mignola, the esteemed creator of Hellboy, has provided an original frontpiece — a portrait of Stoker's baleful and vindictive Judge — and an introduction entitled "Bram Stoker and I". Also included is a reproduction (in miniature) of the story's 1891 appearance in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News's Christmas annual, Holly Leaves. Rounding out the booklet are endnotes and an afterword by Gothic scholar Jack G. Voller. And remember, "Rats is bogies, I tell you, and bogies is rats!"