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The Bram Stoker Series is a subscription only series from The Swan River Press. For €25.00 (including postage and packing), subscribers will receive each new title shortly after its publication date.

The first of three brand new titles (following on from 2010’s Four Romances by Mr. Bram Stoker,  Bram Stoker’s Other Gothics–Contemporary Reviews, and Extracts from Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving by Bram Stoker) is coming in January 2011.

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

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“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 legendary. 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).

Contemporary Reviews of “Dracula” will be followed by To My Dear Friend Hommy-Beg: The Great Friendship of Bram Stoker and Hall Caine, introduced by Richard Dalby, and The Definitive Judge’s House, with an introduction and frontpiece by Mike Mignola and endnotes and afterword by Jack G. Voller.