Bram Stoker Archives | Swan River Press

Remembering David J. Skal

“I’ll show you what horror means!” – Frederic March as Mr. Hyde

Suggested listening: “The Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett

Although I was fortunate enough to meet and get to know David J. Skal many years later at a post-seminar reception at the Stag’s Head in central Dublin, my first introduction to him was through his seminal volume The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (1993), which at the time was on the New Books shelf in my high school library. I’d told David on the night that I first met him the impact his book had had on me, a young horror fan, and how it repositioned and broadened my understanding of a genre I had always innately loved—he gave horror, from dusty old books to shimmering celluloid to the flickering cathode tube, the sort of validity that I needed at that point in my life. And as all the best horror surveys should do, David’s Monster Show sent me scurrying to the library, to video rental shelves, and to Madison’s once plentiful second-hand bookshops, with full permission to follow that excitement and seek out new horrors. As I write this, I have here my copy of The Monster Show, with its Edward Gorey cover, that David kindly inscribed for me that night in 2008: “That’s Monstertainment!”.

The next time I met David was in 2010, when he was a guest lecturer on the “Popular Literature” course at Trinity College Dublin. He was staying in a massive, newly built apartment complex on Ossory Road off North Strand. It had a spacious central courtyard that his flat faced onto. I recall David telling me during one of my visits there that he fancied himself perhaps the only inmate of the structure; at nightfall, he said, most of the other windows in the complex remained dark and vacant. Maybe. Dracula’s Castle—Recession Gothic.

I was also invited to David’s Halloween party that year. David loved Halloween—of course he did! He wrote a book on it!—and the party was yet another manifestation of that lifelong condition since identified by medical experts as “Monster Kid”. It’s that fundamental impulse that drives some of us. You’ll know in your heart if you’re afflicted and will be familiar with the associated symptoms. David was absolutely stricken by it. He threw the party for his students and Trinity colleagues; I wasn’t affiliated with Trinity at all though, but I was glad to be welcomed. However, though not then a student, it is in large part due to David that I thought . . . perhaps I’d like to do a masters at Trinity. I enrolled the very next year.

David spent a lot of time in Dublin over the subsequent years, occasionally staying with me. He was mainly doing research for his Stoker biography, Something in the Blood, which was published in 2016, so he had a reason for his many returns. But he’d made a lot of friends here in Dublin too—and he was always welcome, his visits felt more like homecomings. Often on his visits we would embark on long walks—and even longer conversations. We talked Irish Gothic and visited places associated with Stoker and Le Fanu, including some pretty obscure locales (the burial place of Stoker’s beloved childhood nurse, anyone?)

Like all good researchers, David asked a lot of questions. Not just of me, but in general. Sometimes I could answer, other times I wondered why I’d not asked the same such questions: “The multi-coloured Georgian doors of Dublin are celebrated now, but were they always painted like that?”. But this tendency to ask questions—in such a concise way, brilliantly free from the assumed—is a skill that I’ve noticed in all the best researchers and scholars. And that was David. He pursued until he was satisfied, until he knew his audience would be satisfied. David always knew his audience.

Another thing people seemed to notice about David when they met him, certainly I did, was his charming and urbane manner—and that voice! It was authoritative, but so warm and inviting. He wanted to share his passions with you. If you’ve seen the documentaries that he’s hosted or narrated, you’ll know his presence and what I mean. David was a natural storyteller, and I recall fondly listening to his memories, how he’d fished sheaves of old archives from a dumpster at Universal Studios, including, remarkably, correspondence from Stoker’s widow Florence—this was to become the backbone of his landmark book Hollywood Gothic (1990). David himself, in his dedication to and celebration of the silver screen, seemed to become a living repository for memories of an era, of the people he’d met, interviewed, and written about over his life, including David Manners, who played Harker in Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931). He also knew Carla Laemmle, Lupita Tovar, Ricou Browning (The Creature from the Black Lagoon was always my favourite!), Sarah Karloff, Raymond Huntley, and so many more. How wonderful that someone like David came along when he did, just as some of those memories of Old Hollywood, those connections to the distant past, were about to fade.

It was my absolute pleasure when David later asked me to help him with various bits of research as he worked on Something in the Blood. I’d often find myself in the National Library pursuing some scrap of information he was after. It was on one of these occasions that I unearthed, almost by chance, a previously unknown Stoker spook story called “Saved by a Ghost”. I excitedly emailed it to David, who responded with such enthusiasm; I reprinted the story for the first time in The Green Book 6, along with commentary by David. Similarly, David wrote an article for The Green Book 4 when I’d located the only known manuscript copy of Lord Longford’s stage adaptation of Carmilla (1932). “The Lady Who Munched—How Carmilla Stormed the Stage” is a sort of Hollywood Gothic-like examination of Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” and it’s trajectory on the stage. More excited emails, of course. Anyway, it’s hard to describe the almost Jamesian thrill of such discoveries, suffice to say I’m so happy to have been able to share these moments with David.

One final memory, perhaps my favourite: David was staying with me in July 2012 on one of his return trips to Dublin. He had asked if I would take publicity photos for him, photos he has since used for the past decade or so. I’m no professional, but David was, and he knew exactly what he wanted, so I obliged. We trounced around Mount Jerome Cemetery in south Dublin looking for perfect backdrops; they were plentiful. David posed and pulled faces for me while I inexpertly snapped away. Rain threatened, but David wanted to use an umbrella as a prop anyway. When Something in the Blood was published, I felt delighted to read David’s warm inscription and acknowledgement note—but also on the jacket’s rear flap was produced one of the photos from the day we shared in Mount Jerome. Before we’d left the house that morning, David asked me, “Do you have a tie I could borrow?” I did. Now, whenever I see those photos—and they’re reproduced a lot, especially now—I feel a special connection. That tie always makes me laugh and remember. I still have it too.

There is much to be said on the impact of David’s work: be it through books like The Monster Show, Dark Carnival, Death Makes a Holiday, or Screams of Reason; his many documentaries for Universal Studios; or his wonderful championing of the Spanish-language film version of Dracula, shot simultaneously alongside Tod Browning’s classic. I’ll leave that commentary to others. As for me, I just wanted to set down this morning just a few of my own memories before they too, like all things, eventually fade away. I will always be grateful for the opportunity to spend time and forge a friendship with someone who I admire so much. It’s often said that you should never meet your heroes. I’ve said before, and I still think it’s true: Meet your heroes. Thank you for the inspiration. I’ll miss you, David. Yours in blood . . .

Brian J. Showers
Æon House, Dublin
12 January 2024

The Green Book 22

“Editor’s Note”

I thought this moment might never come. Perhaps on some levels I was even avoiding it due to an oversaturation of the blood-stained, opera-cloaked market. But at long last, we seem to have a Bram Stoker issue of The Green Book in our hands! Some of the keen-eyed might have realised this from the cover, which features as the background Pamela Colman Smith’s illustration for The Lair of the White Worm (1911), while the inset image is a detail from the printed boards of The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903). (It dawns on me as I write this that, while there is plenty of White Worm action herein, there’s nothing about Jewel—however, a scarab does make an appearance . . . )

The first piece in this issue is an appreciation of “The Judge’s House” (1891), and an accompanying illustration, by Mike Mignola, a writer and artist whose memorable creation Hellboy boasts direct lineage from the works of Stoker. This short essay first appeared as the introduction to the Swan River booklet The Definitive Judge’s House (2011), now long out of print. I thought it might be nice to give it another outing.

Next is another personal reminiscence transcribed from a lecture given by Leslie Shepard in 2000. In it, Shepard describes a situation familiar to many book collectors: the rare volume that “got away”. Shepard also outlines a mystery about Stoker, the first of three Stoker-related mysteries to be found in this issue. Those of a certain vintage might recall that Leslie Shepard co-founded the Bram Stoker Society, here in Dublin, in 1980. We’ll come back to the Bram Stoker Society in a moment.

Douglas A. Anderson submitted a year ago an uncollected piece entitled “Black Spirits and White” by Henry Irving—or perhaps not? As Anderson conjectures in his brief note introducing the tale, there is a possibility that Stoker himself might have penned the piece (Mystery #2). Alas, we will likely never learn the answer, however you’re welcome to draw your own conclusion.

After this, we’re reprinting in its entirety another Swan River booklet from the out-of-print Stoker Series: Four Romances by Mr. Bram Stoker (2009). Paul Murray introduces the quartet of stories, noting that they showcase a different side to Stoker’s literary output than readers might be used to: the domestic drama. Augmenting this selection is a short piece by Stoker’s mother, Charlotte, and her rules for domestic happiness. The title pretty much says it all. (As an aside, I posited in the preface to Old Hoggen and Other Adventures (2017) that Stoker might have been planning a collection of “romance” stories prior to his death. For the curious, this volume might have contained stories such as “When the Sky Rains Gold” (1894), “Bengal Roses” (1898), “A Young Widow” (1899), and three of the four stories included in this issue—“Our New House” sneaked its way into Old Hoggen as an adventure. Who the audience is for an entire collection of Stoker’s romances, curious though they may be to the scholar, I am not entirely certain. Anyhow, see what you think.)

I hope you’ll allow me a further indulgence, but I’m running one of my own articles in this issue—an essay with which readers of the late, lamented journal Wormwood might already be familiar. In “Bram Stoker and Another Dracula”, I discuss whether or not Stoker ever intended to write a sequel to Dracula (Mystery #3). It’s a question that fascinates me, and I think I’ve come up with a pretty good answer—but we can never know for sure. This essay was inspired by a paraphrased “interview” with Stoker that appeared in an issue of The Occult Review, just months before his passing in April 1912. In this piece, Mr. Stoker divulges some curious titbits, which I make use of in my own essay. I won’t spoil the surprise, but I thought it worth reprinting this interview in its entirety as well.

I’m sad to report the passing in October 2022 of David Lass, who, along with Leslie Shepard and John Leahy, co-founded the Bram Stoker Society at Trinity College Dublin. An early member of the society, Albert Power, who was present for its inaugural meeting, has provided a memorial tribute to David Lass.

And so I would like to dedicate this issue to not only David, but also Leslie and John. Along with the aforementioned Wormwood, the journal of the Bram Stoker Society was a definitive inspiration for The Green Book.

And finally, to all those aficionados of The Jewel of Seven Stars: better luck next time.

Buy The Green Book 22

Brian J. Showers
Æon House, Dublin
12 July 2023

The Green Book 14

Green Book 14 EDITOR’S NOTE

We encounter and enjoy authors mostly through their writing, forgetting sometimes that there are personalities behind their words, some astonishingly well-known in their time, often now relegated to small press rediscoveries. With sufficient spans of years, these authors and their personalities pass out of memory, becoming less familiar to us as people and more so as names on title pages. But it is important to remember that these authors lived and worked, had careers and relationships; some of them died while relatively unknown, others were widely celebrated for their creations. With this in mind, I’ve decided to focus the current issue on reminiscences, interviews, and memoirs in hopes of summoning the shades of these writers and to show that in some ways their lives were not always so different from our own.

To that end, you will find a number of texts I have been collecting these past few years, now nestled here comfortably beside one another. Each one, I hope, will give you some insight into the lives of these authors, who they were, and a past that is not necessarily so far distant.

There are first-hand accounts by authors with whom I hope you are now familiar. Rosa Mulholland, Cheiro, and Dorothy Macardle all relate anecdotes of their own experiences with the psychical and supernatural. Elsewhere in this issue, you can spend an entertaining evening with Mervyn Wall. In this talk, given to the Bram Stoker Society in 1987, he delves into witchcraft and details the origins of his best-loved novel, The Unfortunate Fursey (1946).

We have a few interviews — “chats” — with those who worked as professionals, and whose names were familiar to the broader public on a weekly basis, as their stories were published and novels serialised in magazines of the day. Among these sketches you’ll be invited to spend agreeable afternoons with L. T. Meade, Charlotte Riddell, and Katharine Tynan. While they may not discuss strictly ghastly material, I hope these interviews bring us that much closer to authors whose works still find admiration of a modern readership.

You’ll also find some brief memoirs, including litterateur William Winter’s reminiscence of his fallen comrade Fitz-James O’Brien, who died in the American Civil War; and Samuel Carter Hall, who conjures two of Dublin’s gothic greats: Charles Maturin and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu — perhaps reminding us that these authors existed in a wider social world.

However, the issue commences with Albert Power’s appraisal of George Croly’s Salathiel (1828), a novel which Stoker biographer Paul Murray posited as an influence on the composition of Dracula. Although, a tale of the Wandering Jew, Salathiel might have more in common thematically with Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, than Bram Stoker’s more famous book. Power aptly leads us through the life of Reverend Croly and how his book fits into the literary milieu of the dark fantastic.

If you would like to read more about some of these writers among these pages, you’ll find lengthier profiles in earlier issues of The Green Book. In Issue 9: Rosa Mulholland; Issue 12: Mervyn Wall; Issue 13: Cheiro and Beatrice Grimshaw. While this issue and the next will serve as an intermission in our Guide to Irish Writers of Gothic, Supernatural, and Fantastic Fiction, fear not — we will return with more entries in future instalments.

Brian J. Showers
Rathmines, Dublin
15 April 2020

You can buy The Green Book here.

Contents

“Editor’s Note”
Brian J. Showers

“Who Marvels at the Mysteries of the Moon: George Croly’s Salathiel”
Albert Power

“Sketch of Fitz-James O’Brien”
William Winter

“Le Fanu and Maturin: Two Reminiscences”
Samuel Carter Hall

“About Ghosts”
Rosa Mulholland

“How I Found Adventure”
Beatrice Grimshaw

“A Biographical Sketch of Mrs. L. T. Meade”
Helen C. Black

“Sweet Singer from Over the Sea”
A Chat with Katharine Tynan

“A Chat with Mrs. J. H. Riddell”
Raymond Blathwayt

“Extracts from Confessions: Memoirs of a Modern Seer”
Cheiro

“They Say It Happened”
Dorothy Macardle

“Ghost Story of a Novelist”
Katharine Tynan

“Witchcraft and the Origins of The Unfortunate Fursey”
Mervyn Wall

“Notes on Contributors”

The Green Book 11

Green Book 11 EDITOR’S NOTE by Brian J. Showers

Our previous issue saw a fabulous array of reminiscences of Lord Dunsany — and also some contemporary assessments of his works — written by his Irish colleagues, including Yeats, Bowen, Gogarty, Tynan, A.E., and others. Issue 10 was fascinating to assemble and the process gave me a better understanding of and more insight into Dunsany’s literary standing in Ireland during his lifetime. If you’ve not yet had a look at our Dunsany issue, and you are in any way interested in this important author, I urge you to track down a copy.

The focus on Dunsany’s contemporaries in Issue 10 was an approach that evolved during research and production. However, during that time I also received a handful of modern appraisals of Dunsany and his work that I simply couldn’t fit into that issue. That’s why I’d like to start this instalment with just a bit more Dunsany.

First up we have Dunsany bibliographer Darrell Schweitzer’s career-spanning survey of the fantasist’s considerable body of work — where a new reader could start, what aficionados might have overlooked, and which titles can, perhaps, be left until later. Next, Martin Andersson, co-editor of the posthumous Dunsany collection The Ghost in the Corner (also reviewed in this issue), explores a lesser-known episode in Dunsany’s life: his Nobel Prize nomination. Finally, novelist Mike Carey offers an appreciation of Fifty-One Tales (1915), a collection not as widely celebrated as Dunsany’s other titles, but maybe one that should be given another read.

The remainder of this issue sees The Green Book in a little bit of a transition.

I’ve long had a penchant for bibliographies, indices, literary guides and encyclopaedias: I frequently take down from the shelf E. F. Bleiler’s Supernatural Fiction Writers (1983), wander the pages of Jack Sullivan’s Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986), and of course Neil Wilson’s Shadows in the Attic (2000) can keep me captivated for hours. I could go on . . .

Last year I commissioned a series of short articles for a book tentatively entitled A Guide to Irish Writers of Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Fiction. Over the past twelve months, Jim Rockhill and I have been working with a range of literary scholars, each exploring an Irish author that has in some way contributed to the broader literature of the fantastic. The results have been nothing short of captivating.

Therefore, in addition to the usual essays and reviews, I’d like to present, for the remainder of this issue, a selection of eight entries—some names you will recognise, others won’t be as familiar — but I do hope you’ll discover new writing to explore.

You can buy The Green Book 11 here.

Contents

“Editor’s Note”
Brian J. Showers

“How Much of Dunsany Is Worth Reading?”
Darrell Schweitzer

“Lord Dunsany and the Nobel Prize”
Martin Andersson

“Appreciating Fifty-One Tales”
Mike Carey

“Regina Maria Roche (1764-1845)”
Albert Power

“B. M. Croker (1848-1920)”
Richard Dalby

“Edmund Downey (1856-1937)”
Gavin Selerie

“Conall Cearnach (1876-1929)”
Reggie Chamberlain-King

“C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)”
Reggie Oliver

“Denis Johnston (1901-1984)”
Reggie Chamberlain-King

“Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)”
Reggie Chamberlain-King

“Conor McPherson (1971- )”
David Longhorn

“Reviews”
Bram Stoker’s Powers of Darkness (Albert Power)
Lord Dunsany’s The Ghost in the Corner (Jay Sturner)

“Notes on Contributors”

Bram Stoker (1847-1912)

5 Stoker “How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.” – Dracula (1897)

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was born in Clontarf, Dublin, and educated at Trinity College. As a young man he worked as a civil servant at Dublin Castle, and as an unpaid theatre critic for local newspapers. He is best known today for his classic horror novel Dracula (1897), but during his lifetime he was known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving, and business manager of Irving’s Lyceum Theatre in London. Other notable works include The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906), The Lair of the White Worm (1911), and the posthumously published collections Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914) and Old Hoggen and Other Adventures (2017).

13e09088602f1915cef60bed8012b2e9 Novels and Collections

The Snake’s Pass (1890)

Dracula (1897)

The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903)

The Lady of the Shroud (1909)

Lair of the White Worm (1911)

Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914)

Old Hoggen and Other Adventures (2017)

Short Stories

“The Judge’s House” (1891)

“Old Hoggen: A Mystery” (1893)

“Burial of the Rats” (1896)

“Dracula’s Guest” (1914)

Find out more about Irish Writers of the Fantastic.

Swan River Press has a number of Bram Stoker publications available, including the limited edition Old Hoggen and Other Adventures, which collects numerous rare and hitherto uncollected stories by the master of the macabre.

We also have three issues of The Green Book that feature Stoker material, including John Edgar Browning’s interview with Stoker’s most recent biographer, David J. Skal, Elizabeth Miller’s fascinating “Shape-shifting Dracula: The Abridged Edition of 1901″, and Carol A. Senf’s essay on The Snake’s Pass and Lady Athlyne.

Finally, there’s our Bram Stoker Series of hand-sewn booklets. The Stoker Series was originally published from 2009 to 2011. We launched the series as a means to investigate some of the more obscure but no less interesting corners of Bram Stoker’s life and literature. The sort of fragments that might otherwise not find their way into publication.

Preface to Bram Stoker’s Old Hoggen

Old Hoggen Two years after his death, the estate of Bram Stoker issued a posthumous collection of short stories by the late author. Published by George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. in April of 1914, Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories is now a frequently reprinted horror collection, a fine showcase of Stoker’s most macabre, grotesque, and sometimes darkly humorous fictions. He included stories previously published in English and American periodicals, many of them now considered classics of the genre, such as “The Judge’s House”, “Burial of the Rats”, and “The Squaw”. With the exception of “The Gipsey Prophecy”, these stories first saw print in the 1890s — although exactly when they had originally been written is still a mystery even to the most ardent Stoker bibliographer.

Despite the collection’s impressive crop of tales, what really entices readers to its pages is undoubtedly the title story. That was probably the intention too. “Dracula’s Guest” is cannily sequenced as the lead story, giving the collection both its title and allure. In her brief preface to the volume, Stoker’s widow Florence notes that she herself had added to the contents this “hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula [ . . . ] originally excised owing to the length of the book”. She most certainly did this with some sense of business acumen. In some ways, “Dracula’s Guest” served as a sort of informal sequel to Dracula, and Florence Stoker was certainly correct to surmise that this addition “may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband’s most remarkable work.”

DraculasGuest “Dracula’s Guest”, atmospheric and other-worldly in execution, has caused over a century of head scratching in Stoker scholarship circles: How exactly does this excised episode fit into Dracula? What accounts for the inconsistencies between the story and the novel? Did a ghost writer contribute to “Dracula’s Guest” in whole or in part? These questions have been explored sufficiently elsewhere, and there is little point in discussing them again here.

Florence, however, did raise another mystery in her preface, a question not as frequently pondered, but no less provocative: “A few months before the lamented death of my husband — I might say even as the shadow of death was over him — he planned three series of short stories for publication, and the present volume is one of them.” If Dracula’s Guest was the first of three collections, then what were the other two?

Within the past decade, a number of hitherto unknown writings by Stoker have been discovered in British, American, Australian, and Irish periodicals, adding profoundly to the scholarship of the previous century. These discoveries include short stories, interviews, articles, essays, sketches, and poems; some have appeared in disparate Stoker-related publications over the past decades, others remain obscure.

Though usually identified with his seminal horror novel Dracula, Stoker was far from confined to just the horror genre. If one looks at this expanded list of Stoker’s uncollected stories — those not included in Under the Sunset (1881), Snowbound (1908), or Dracula’s Guest (1914) — certain themes begin to emerge. Whereas Dracula’s Guest collects Stoker’s “weird stories”, the uncollected tales can loosely be categorised as tales of romance or tales of adventure. The stories we have gathered for the present volume fall distinctly into the latter group, though as with much of what Stoker wrote, touches of the macabre, grotesque, romantic, and darkly humorous are still to be found throughout.

Jacket Portrait While I would not presume to claim that Old Hoggen and Other Adventures is a long-lost classic by Bram Stoker, I do hope that it stands as a tantalising possibility, one of the other two collections Stoker was planning in his final years. Rather, the book you now hold in your hands I hope will be read as the collection that might have been.

Had Bram Stoker lived longer, he might have selected and edited these works differently. But, as fate has entrusted to us their issuance, I hope that it is fitting and proper to let these adventures go forth as Stoker had left them, and for the enjoyment of a new generation of readers.

A hardback, limited edition of Bram Stoker’s Old Hoggen and Other Adventures is available to order from Swan River Press. With a cover by Jason Zerrillo and an Introduction by John Edgar Browning and Brian J. Showers. Order a copy here.

Irish Writers of the Fantastic

2017-08-05-Irish-Writers-Po A good while back I posted the image of a poster designed by myself and long-time Swan River conspirator Jason Zerrillo. It features a line-up of Ireland’s most recognisable and possibly most influential writers of fantastic literature. I explained the impetus for the poster’s creation in an earlier post.

While I’m pleased with the results, it was not easy choosing who to include and who to leave off. Much as I wanted to indulge in the most obscure and overlooked (Oliver Sherry, anyone?), there is also merit in showcasing the luminaries: a reminder of this island’s contributions to worlds of unbridled imagination.

Ultimately, this poster is meant as a gateway for exploration. So you can imagine my delight when Alison Lyons of Dublin City Libraries and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature agreed to produce copies of the poster to distribute for free around Dublin this autumn. The goal had always been to make this poster available to libraries, schools, bookshops, to anywhere that loves to promote good literature, and to anyone who loves to read it.

To augment this poster, I also wrote a series of capsule biographies and recommended reading for each authors. You can find it over on the Dublin City of Literature website.

And so how do you get a copy of the poster? Easy! Go into any Dublin City Library branch and ask! Better yet, have a browse around for these authors’ books. Librarians will be happy to help!

Happy Birthday, Mr. Stoker!

Today is 8 November 2015—Bram Stoker’s 168th birth anniversary. To celebrate both his birthday and the launch of the Bram Stoker Bronze Bust Project, we are selling today only for a special price our Complete Bram Stoker Series. That’s all seven hand-sewn booklets for €30.00. (The booklets normally sell for €10.00 each. You can do the math, I’m sure.)

If you’re itching already, you can click here to buy it. Otherwise read on.

The Stoker Series was originally published from 2009 to 2011. We launched the series as a means to investigate some of the more obscure but no less interesting corners of Bram Stoker’s life and literature. The sort of fragments that might otherwise not find their way into publication.

The first booklet is a brief history of Dublin’s Bram Stoker Society, founded by Leslie Shepard in 1980. Among other accomplishments, the Stoker Society paved the way for the installation of the memorial plaque that can still be seen on Kildare Street to this day.

The second booklet, Four Romances by Mr. Bram Stoker, features a quartet of previously uncollected short stories. Don’t be put off by the title—some of the “romances” are quite startling. The booklet is introduced by Stoker biographer Paul Murray, and features illustrations from the stories’ original magazine appearances.

The third booklet, fully illustrated with first edition book covers and newspaper reviews, is Stoker’s Other Gothics. As the subtitle “Contemporary Reviews” suggests, scholar Carol A. Senf looks at how Stoker’s other Gothic novels (the not-Dracula-ones) were received by the public when they were first published: Lair of the White Worm, Lady of the Shroud, Under the Sunset, etc. The booklet also reproduces the rarely seen dust jacket for The Jewel of Seven Stars.

Booklet the fourth was edited by world-renowned Stoker scholar Elizabeth Miller, who chose extracts from Stoker’s Reminiscences of Henry Irving, in which Stoker details his encounters with luminaries of the day including Ellen Terry, Tennyson, Richard Burton, Buffalo Bill, Franz Liszt, and Walt Whitman. There’s a rare photograph of Stoker in this one too, on board a transatlantic ship. And I think he’s wearing a flat cap.

The fifth booklet is not unlike the second—it features contemporary reviews, only this time you get your Dracula fix. With an introduction by Leah Moore and John Reppion (who wrote a fantastic Dracula adaptation for Dynamite Comics), this booklet aims to explore the myth that Dracula was ill-received on first publication. As with Bram Stoker’s Other Gothics, it features first edition cover reproductions.

The sixth booklet, To My Dear Friend Hommy-Beg, was edited by legendary anthologist Richard Dalby, and explores the friendship between Stoker and novelist Hall Caine—you’ll recall that Stoker famously dedicated Dracula to Caine. This booklet features reproductions of inscriptions from Stoker to Caine, including a facsimile reproduction of the inscription Stoker wrote in Caine’s own copy of Dracula. The series is worth it for that alone.

The final booklet is another dream come true. For this one we worked with Hellboy scribe and artist Mike Mignola on a definitive edition of Stoker’s haunted house story “The Judge’s House”. Mike not only wrote an introduction to the volume, but also provided an original illustration. How cool is that?

We’re quite proud of the Bram Stoker Series and hope you’ll take advantage of the special price we’re offering on Stoker’s birthday. The goal of the series was (and remains) to get people to explore Bram Stoker’s life and works in a broader context. We hope we’ve achieved that with these publications.

Oh, and the first ten orders will also receive a special bonus gift (I’ll let you know what that is when you order). Click here to order. And if you’re looking for another unique Stoker item, we’ve also reprinted a newly discovered ghost story by Stoker in issue six of The Green Book. You can order a copy of that here. It’s pretty cool cause it’s not been reprinted since 1873.

And if nothing else, we hope tonight you’ll pull your old copy of Dracula down from the shelf and raise a glass to the memory of Mr. Stoker!

Sorry, lads! Dracula’s Not Irish . . .

A few doors down from where I work is a boarding house in which Bram Stoker once lodged for a few months before permanently relocating to London, where he would work for much the rest of his life for the celebrated actor Sir Henry Irving. Other than that, the house is notable as being the only building in Dublin with a plaque on it dedicated to Stoker—and, by the way, some think it might not even be the correct building. But that’s a rant for another day.

Anyway, numerous times per day, tour guides passing on buses proclaim from their crackling loudspeakers that Stoker got the name “Dracula” from the Irish phrase “droch fhola“, meaning “bad blood”. Unfortunately this is complete rubbish and little more than a coincidental homophone. A nice one, I’ll admit that, but . . .

I usually hear the false “droch fhola” claim repeated in locally-produced documentaries or in pamphlets focused on labouring the well-established biographical fact of Stoker’s Irish origin. I’m guessing this is probably a vain attempt to hitch (and therefore legitimise?) Stoker’s best-known novel to the national identity—as if Stoker simply being a Dubliner isn’t enough, he needs to have written a thoroughly Irish novel, apparently. (By the way, if you’re looking for an Irish novel by Stoker, check out his first book The Snake’s Pass published in 1890. It’s a cracking read!)

As a rule of thumb, however, beware anyone who tells you they know what Dracula is really about. That it is, for example, a veiled commentary on the nineteenth-century Irish absentee landlord system. It’s a fair reading of the novel, sure, but that’s different from declaring such an interpretation as Stoker’s own clever and intentional encoding.

I’d also discard immediately any genealogist who makes the claim that Dracula was inspired by Stoker’s distant relative, the sixteenth-century Irish lord Manus “the Magnificent” O’Donnell. While I won’t dispute that Stoker and O’Donnell share DNA—many of us on the island probably do anyway, not to mention said genealogist also certified Barack Obama as Irish—but I do have a problem with someone making the further claim that this, of course, must then be the true inspiration for Dracula. Notice a trend here? (Cue Carly Simon: ” . . . you probably think this song is about you.”)

For all of the confusion and misinformation that obscures Stoker’s novel like a thick Victorian fog, there is one primary resource we do have that’s really quite amazing: Bram Stoker’s own working notes for Dracula. The notes were published in a beautiful facsimile edition with transcriptions and annotations by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller. Dr. Miller, by the way, also wrote a book called Dracula: Sense & Nonsense. She wrote it to dispel the enormous mountains of bullshit and fabricated mythologies that have accumulated over the decades and now obstruct the popular perception of the original novel. Crab-induced nightmares, anyone?

But let’s get back to this “droch fhola” bullshit and Stoker’s working notes for Dracula. It’s a fascinating collection of documents and if you’re at all interested in Stoker you might want to have a look at it. Among the extensive notes, Stoker tells us exactly where he got the name “Dracula”. And it’s got nothing to do with Ireland at all. Sorry, lads! Here, have a look for yourself:

I’d say Stoker’s own notes are a lot more convincing than all that wishful speculation and naval-gazing, don’t you? And just for good measure, here’s the page from Wilkinson’s Principalities of Wallachia and Moldovia (courtesy of the John Moore Collection) that Stoker is referring to in the above note. It’s even the very same edition he would have looked at in the Whitby Library in August 1890 :

If you’re really interested in Stoker and Dracula, here’s a core list of books I’d suggest you read. The first one might seem a little obvious to state, but when I first read Dr. Miller’s Sense & Nonsense, I noted how many times she upended a spurious assertion simply by quoting directly from the novel. So, first up:

Dracula by Bram Stoker. Archibald Constable, 1897.

Next we have some immediate works about Dracula. Anyone serious about investigating the novel needs to borrow these from the library:

Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula. Annotated and transcribed by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller. McFarland & Co., 2008.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula: A Critical Feast [a collection of contemporary reviews] edited by John Edgar Browning. Acryphile Press, 2012.
Dracula: Sense & Nonsense by Elizabeth Miller. Desert Island, 2000 (rev. 2006).

These next two are vitally important because they’re the main documents where Stoker gives us any real personal insight, and even then there’s not much:

The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years. Edited by Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker. Biteback Publishing, 2013.
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving by Bram Stoker. William Heinemann, 1906.

And see, that’s the main problem. Stoker never really wrote that much about himself. Most of what we know about Stoker is inferred from other sources. That’s why making claims about Stoker’s “true” intentions is problematic. As for biographies, until David J. Skal’s Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker comes out later next year, I will refer you to:

From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker by Paul Murry. Jonathan Cape, 2004.
“Mr. Stoker’s Holiday” by Christopher Frayling in Bram Stoker: Centenary Essays edited by Jarlath Killeen. Four Courts Press, 2014. [A dazzling investigation of Stoker’s time in Whitby.]

On the other hand, if you’ve got access to some primary source of information that indicates Stoker was familiar with the phrase “droch fhola“, or even that he knew some Irish, you really ought to share it with the rest of us—because it would be a major literary discovery.

Next week, we’ll be discussing whether or not the mummies of St. Michan’s church were the inspiration for Dracula—and the further assertion that the young Stoker used to play amongst the tombstones there as a child. How a child who was an invalid until the age of seven could play in a churchyard is beyond me—and why his mother allowed the fragile boy to travel to the other side of Dublin, when there were perfectly good churchyards much closer to the house, is probably a matter for the Department of Child Welfare and Protection. One might as well head to Transylvania on an expedition for the “real” Castle Dracula. (Hint: try the first four chapters instead.)

Until then, class dismissed!

For those with a further interest in Bram Stoker, Swan River Press has recently published a hitherto unknown ghost story by Stoker. It appears in print for the first time since its original publication in 1873 in issue six of our flagship journal The Green Book. You can order a copy here.

The Green Book 6

EDITOR’S NOTE

So far The Green Book has been avoiding Mr. Bram Stoker. Not out of dislike or animosity, but for a journal that hopes to illuminate the lesser seen corners of Irish fantastic literature, I felt it was okay to let Stoker—our most prominent spokesman—wait patiently in the wings for the first few issues and allow others the spotlight for just a moment. But now that we’re six numbers in, it’s time to give Mr. Stoker his due and allow him to take centre stage. And so we pull back the red velvet curtains on this issue in grand style.

It’s not every day one discovers a forgotten story by Bram Stoker. But there it was, on page three of an equally forgotten daily newspaper. It appeared quite unexpectedly in the far right-hand column. There’s nothing quite like that rush of excitement one feels when making such a discovery in the otherwise subdued and dimly-lit microfilm room of the National Library. The thrill of reading that recognisable prose, filled with masculinity, adventurous seafaring, nefarious murder, teetotalling, a clever fiancée, and a ghost. Did I not mention it’s a ghost story too? It is, and also the second (known) story Stoker had ever published. No, it’s not every day that one discovers a forgotten story by Bram Stoker. But they’re out there, just waiting to be uncovered. And we’re happy to be able to share this one, which has lain dormant for nearly 150 years, with you.

We’re equally fortunate to have in this issue an introduction from David J. Skal giving some background and context to Stoker’s lost tale. As some of you may already know, Skal’s new biography of Stoker, Something in the Blood, will be out next year; certainly an event keenly anticipated by many. At the end of this issue, John Edgar Browning, himself no stranger to unearthing forgotten writings by Stoker, interviews Skal about Dracula, Stoker, and his forthcoming book.

So what’s in between this Stoker sandwich? Glad you asked. We’ve got an excellent essay on Lafcadio Hearn’s Irish influences from John Moran (to coincide with the Hearn exhibition running this autumn at the Little Museum of Dublin), a short reminiscence of the Great War by Lord Dunsany, a piece by Martin Hayes on the fraught relationship between Yeats and Crowley (hey, we’ve got to mark the Great Poet’s sesquicentenary somehow, right?), and finally an essay on the oddly overlooked mystic, visionary, poet, artist, pacifist, and statesman George William Russell (AE)—rightly described by Archbishop Gregg as “that myriad-minded man”—who I hope you will find as interesting as I do. In addition to all this, we have our usual crop of reviews, from which I hope you’ll find something to discover.

Finally, before I leave you in the capable hands of Mr. Stoker, I would like to direct your attention to the cover. Here you will find Harry Clarke’s “Mephisto” (1914) from Goethe’s Faust. Stoker’s employer, the celebrated actor-manager Sir Henry Irving, played Mephistopheles with great success throughout his career. It is a role Stoker saw him perform over seven hundred times. The infernal character, as portrayed by Irving, is thought to have influenced Dracula—but the astute reader will catch Stoker’s much earlier reference to Mephistopheles in the pages ahead.

And now, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present to you, Mr. Bram Stoker’s “Saved by a Ghost” . . .

Brian J. Showers
Rathmines, Dublin
16 August 2015

Order The Green Book 6 here.

Contents

“Editor’s Note”
Brian J. Showers

“Saved by a Ghost”
Bram Stoker

“Some Comments on ‘Saved by a Ghost'”
by David J. Skal

“Early Influences on Lafcadio Hearn”
John Moran

“Stray Memories”
Lord Dunsany

“Fry-Ups with the Poets and Prophets”
Martin Hayes

“AE: Mystic and Economist”
Ernest A. Boyd

“Something in His Blood: An Interview with David J. Skal”
John Edgar Browning

“Reviews”

Mervyn Wall’s The Unfortunate/Return of Fursey (Darrell Schweitzer)

Craftsman Audio’s Complete Ghost Stories of Le Fanu (Rob Brown)

Caitriona Lally’s Eggshells (John Howard)

Ivan Kavanagh’s The Canal (Bernice M. Murphy)

“Notes on Contributors”

Older posts