Editions of "Dracula"

First up, an edition from Four Corner Books, published in 2008 (this is the second printing from 2009).

There's always a concept of some kind behind their editions. for example their The Picture of Dorian Gray (which I don't own) is in the format of high-end fashion magazine and illustrated with appropriate photography.

Here, the book's cover echoes the first edition (but the design is a bit tidier!).





Each narrator/"voice" in the novel has their own distinct typeface.



Illustrations are full-page, pencil drawings which do not depict any people, so there is no representation of the Count in this one.

This is the Folio Society's 2008 edition, with an introduction from Irish novelist John Banville and illustrations by wood engraver Abigail Rorer, including one in colour.



Here's the colour frontispiece and the title page.


Here's an example of one of the interior illustrations.

>2 housefulofpaper:
I forgot to put the ruler in the pictures. In the slip-case, this book is the same height as the Four Corners edition.

The 2019 Folio Society limited edition.

Fabric-covered decorated slip-case. Leather cover. Illustrations by Angela Barrett. Reprints John Banville's introduction. Limited to 750 numbered copies.

Here's the slip-case.



The cover.


Title page.
-

Interior illustration.


Illustration at the end of a chapter.

The Fine Press Forum group brought this to my attention last year. They discussed both this edition and a more expensive edition, which has sold out. There was some disapproval of the volumes for being gimmicky, especially the more expensive edition which included soil from Transylvania and the creators' signatures in their own blood (sealed and safe, they assured us).

I held off at the time, I had just bought the Folio edition after all, but month and more in lockdown, seeing the thread again, suddenly my credit card was burning a hole in my pocket..anyway, this is the 2019 edition from Amaranthine Books of Zagreb (the Transylvanian edition). One of 666 numbered copies.

Here is the book in its slip-case, which is polyurethane and textured to resemble wood - to resemble one of Dracula's "earth boxes", in fact.



The cover with Dracula's profile printed on a velvet-textured cloth cover. My phone doesn't really capture the colour or the way the cloth reflects the light.



Some design decisions look odd from the angle of the Anglo-American Fine Press tradition. For example the main text starts on the verso of the page (the left hand side). The point size is larger than in the other editions - not quite to the extent of being a large-print book, but it's noticeably thicker than the other editions (it makes for a thicker book, I mean). Also showing is the plastic stake-shaped bookmark the publisher included (the book also has a ribbon marker).



Here's one of the colour interior illustrations. You can also see an editorial decision that I think is unique to this edition, printing certain, presumably key, paragraphs in bold.



The cover and interior illustrations are glow in the dark. As I said, gimmicks.

Edited to add - as I should have realised, a passage in bold type is the moment in the story that the illustration on the facing page is illustrating.

#2 (((fave))) But I do love that illustration in the Four Corners.

Great pictures. Hm, I missed that they recycled (presumably?) Banville's intro for the LE.

The Amaranthine Press edition is a lot of fun. The cover illustration of the Count is the best ever conceptualisation, IMO.

>6 LolaWalser:
I'm glad you liked them. Yes, the Four Corners book is very atmospheric in an understated way. Banville's introduction is reused. I'm not sure how I feel about it. initially it was disappointing but, if a new introduction had been commissioned would I have felt the loss of the Banville? He's quite a big name after all and as an Irish author, particularly appropriate to contribute an introduction. If it had been possible to reprint him alongside a newly commissioned one - would it give the book the slightly rag-bag air that (say) some Centipede Press books can have when they include old interviews and introductions, old paperback covers, etc?

>7 LolaWalser:
I had the same thought about that cover image. It's striking (I think it is, anyway) how both this and the FS limited edition aimed for fidelity to the description in the text, yet came up with such different images.

The New Annotated Dracula edited by Leslie S. Klinger

This contains the full text of the novel. The square format of the book provides wide margins for explanatory notes, illustrative photos, etc.

Also includes an introduction "the context of Dracula"; after the novel, appendices (including the short story "Dracula's Guest" - probably a rejected chapter - Stoker decided to start the novel with Harker further on in his journey); and a final section covering the novel's cultural impact over the past century or so (it's a shock to realise that this book, which in my head is still a recent-ish purchase, is already 12 years old!)

I can't pass over what I consider a lapse of taste, and a real unwelcome surprise when I first got this book. In his preface, Stoker mention the Jack the Ripper murders. Klinger illustrates this section by printing a photo of Mary Kelly's mutilated body.

In annotating the text, Klinger has applied the same approach he applied to his Annotated edition of the Sherlock Holmes canon. For a long time, Sherlockians have amused themselves by treating the stories as fact, and then setting out to explain away apparent errors and contradictions in the text (how many times was Watson married? Where and how were his wounds from Afghanistan? etc). Klingr played this game all through his notes to Holmes, and does the same thing to Stoker's novel here.

Here's the book in its dust jacket.

-

Here's the book without its jacket.



Two pages showing the novel's text surrounded by Klinger's notes.



I've included this double page spread because Klinger issued quite a large number of errata, or rather made them available on his website. I copied the corrections over to my copy, as you can see here. I really don't know if the corrections were made to subsequent reprints (was it reprinted?)



Here's a double page with an illustration. The editorial matter at the front and back does have more illustrations, some in colour, than is evident in the annotated novel pages.

Great thread.

>5 housefulofpaper:
I really, really like the look of the Amaranthine edition, but the only copy I can find is £800. I seem to remember you posting when you purchased it--I should have grabbed a copy then!

I'm never quite sure about Folio Society editions; they often strike me as a bit garish. The 2019 edition is a case in point as the wolves on the cover seem to me rather Disney cartoonish (perhaps, even, a hint of Wile E. Coyote?) I quite like the look of the 2008 edition, but, again, it is now very expensive.

>9 housefulofpaper:
Quite agree with you about the Mary Kelly photograph, and it's a shame about the errata (and I do not at all have your neatness when annotating books), but I'm still very tempted by the Klinger edition. Not least because I'm intrigued to read Klinger's notes.

>10 alaudacorax:
This is the cheaper of the two versions from Amaranthine books. The other edition is sold out, but I bought this from the publisher's website just a week ago. It wasn't £800!

Thank you for this thread. I have just spent five minutes in heaven admiring beautiful books.

Perhaps heaven is not the right place to mention given the book involved.

>11 housefulofpaper:

Never thought to check the publisher's website. The person on AbeBooks is obviousy trying it on! Still a bit too rich for my blood, though.

>11 housefulofpaper:, >13 alaudacorax:

Ah. Just found last year's post where you mentioned you were going to buy it and memory came flooding back. I remember drooling over it at the time and dismissing it as too painful for my wallet.

>12 pgmcc:

I'm not sure if 'heaven' is the right word given all the TEMPTATION involved.

>10 alaudacorax:

Whew, someone else who doesn't like the Folio LE, thought I'd be alone on that... No offense to the fans, de gustibus etc.

I quite like the look of the 2008 edition, but, again, it is now very expensive.

It's curious they haven't reprinted it by now, seems it would be a good seller (again) for sure. At least, as it's a standard edition, one may keep hoping for a reprint.

>1 housefulofpaper: Great photos, thanks. The last time I read 'Dracula' (last year), I read from the Folio Society edition (post number 2), which is my fave. I also have the Four Corner Books edition, which I like very much for its lovely cover and illustrations. The Amaranthine edition looks amazing, especially the illustrations that glow in the dark.

I also value the paperback Norton Critical Edition of 'Dracula', edited by Nina Auerback and David J Skal (1997). It has a striking, metallic, blood red, mirror-like cover with an illustration of Dracula himself, Sir Henry Irving. It has 150+ extra pages, with sections on:
- Contexts, such as an excerpt from Emily Gerard's 1885 opus 'Transylvanian Superstitions', and Christopher Frayling discussing Stoker's working papers for the book;
- Original reviews from Athenaeum, Spectator, etc;
- Discussion of Dramatic and film variations; and
- Criticism, including Christopher Craft on Gender and Inversion in 'Dracula', and Talia Schaffer's essay 'A Wilde Desire Took Me' - a homoerotic history of 'Dracula'.

>16 Rembetis:

Irving played Dracula, who knew?! Amazing illustration.

>17 LolaWalser:

Irving didn't play Dracula, but there is a theory that he largely was Dracula, or at least his commanding personality and saturnine character was something that Stoker drew on, possibly subconsciously, when writing the novel.

That's a photo of Irving playing Mephistopheles. A Penguin Classics edition from the early '90s that I used to own used the same photo for its cover. At first glance I thought it was Christopher Lee, which is interesting!

I do have the Norton edition too but I think it must be a later printing. The cover is grey in a black border, and the photo of Irving is cropped down to basically a mugshot.

Edited - corrected "Irving" to "Stoker" in the first paragraph.

>18 housefulofpaper:

there is a theory that he largely was Dracula

Oh, LOL!

I too saw Lee in that face! Refrained from saying as it feels I'm pushing movies into everything these days...

>14 alaudacorax: As a countryman of mine once said, "I can resist anything but temptation".

>18 housefulofpaper: >19 LolaWalser: It's interesting that, in order to establish the stage rights to 'Dracula', there was a staged reading of the 'play' at the Lyceum Theatre (in reality, pasted together segments of the book). If I remember right from various biographies, Sir Henry Irving refused to participate in the event, but drifted through anyway, and told Stoker 'Dracula' was 'dreadful!' Funny that Irving is almost completely forgotten, and Stoker's creation seems immortal!

I can recommend the fiction book (based on real events), 'Shadowplay' by Joseph O'Connor. An engrossing tale of the relationship between Sir Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Bram Stoker; and the background to the creation of 'Dracula'. I found it engrossing and emotional.

>22 frahealee: Dust covers were originally introduced as a wrapper to protect the book and it was known for the cover to be pulled off and binned at the time of purchase. Since then the dust covers have become collector items in themselves and a book with its original dust jacket will be valued multiple times its value without it.

>24 frahealee:
You can use a cushion, or two, to rest an old book on so it does not open fully. That saves the spine while giving you a chance to view the content. If your books are old they may pre-date copyright.

>27 frahealee: Were you rushing home before the direct sunlight struck you?

:-)

>29 frahealee: I can just picture your strolling through the grass with bats over head and the wolves striding along beside you.

Okay, not strictly editions of Dracula, but books about Dracula. Clockwise from the top, we have...

The chapter on Dracula from Sir Christopher Frayling's Nightmare: the Birth of Horror - the tie-in book to the 1996 BBC TV series. This is really good. Informative, accurate and a lively read. The Dracula episode is currently uploaded to ...the usual place.

The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula. It's not by any means an academic book but for about half its length this is also informative and a lively read, and as far as I recall it's accurate as well. But it does start to fizzle out and descend to obvious filler material and "listicles" well before the end.

Dracula: An International Perspective is an academic textbook in Palgrave Macmillan's Palgrave Gothic series. As such it's usually ludicrously expensive and I wouldn't have bought it. But by chance I got wind of an online sale over Christmas where their books were priced at about 10% of the usual price. So here it is. Most interesting essays? Looking at the Pied Piper myth as an overlooked possible influence on Dracula; plotting out a likely location for castle Dracula based on a close reading of the text and working out the likely speeds of the horse drawn vehicles used by Jonathan Harker at the start of the novel and the "band of light" (van Helsing et al) at the end - and thereby defending Stoker against accusations of authorial clumsiness; and similar thoughts on who Stoker may have hd in mind as the "historical" Dracula. Other essays look at the literary precursors of Dracula, literary representations of "the East" and tourism. Tourism and literary close reading are probably the two distinguishing topics of this collection.

The Cambridge Companion to Dracula only arrived this evening, courtesy of Amazon (I'm trying not to use Amazon, but I received vouchers for my lockdown birthday). So no thoughts on it yet.

Who is Dracula's Father? - John Sutherland (Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus at University College London) had already produced a couple of books devoted to sorting out or investigating "cruxes" - puzzles or apparent mistakes - in literary classics. And here's a whole book devoted to such issues in Dracula. The title question, and "Why does van Helsing swear in German" and "Who washes Dracula's pinafore", and so on. Also includes an irreverent summary of the novel by John Crace, in the style of his '"x" Digested' Guardian column. And this one does have Christopher Lee on the cover!

Dracula: The Novel & The Legend subtitled "A Study of Bram Stoker's Gothic Masterpiece". The oldest book here, 1985 according to the copyright page. Clive Leatherdale has written at least one more Dracula book, and it seems to be referenced in preference to this one. I don't have Dracula Unearthed (2006) so don't know how the author's thoughts have developed and/or changed. This book is split into three sections, firstly covering vampires, previous vampire literature, the origins of Dracula. The second part is titled "Dramatic Prsonae". The third is "Perspectives", those being sexual symbolism, Psychoanalytical, Dracula as Christian parody, etc. I'v already mentioned that the 2006 BBC Dracula, which veered away from Stoker a great deal, made more sense after I'd read this book. It seemed to me I had found where some of the production's ideas had come from.

Yes, a most attractive all-you-can-bite buffet! I've seen several of those literary puzzles books by Sutherland but never that one *takes note*. The Palgrave and the Cambridge U. tomes are impressive and way past hobbyism.
Off to look for Frayling's programme now, double quick...

There's a Dracula ballet on BBC Four right now!
Not the Guy Maddin film, this is a different production by Northern Ballet. I spotted it in the schedules with 3 minutes to spare, otherwise I would have given advance notice.
If you're in the UK and have a TV licence, you can catch up on iPlayer.

Oldstyle Tales is a small press run by M. Grant Kellermeyer, M.A. He has produced annotated editions of classic works of Gothic and Weird fiction and also illustrates them with a rough but vigorous white-on-black style. The books are produced as print-on-demand paperbacks.

I had bought his edition of Algernon Blackwood tales because it contained a couple I didn't own in other editions. I suppose it was realising that even the Klinger edition of Dracula is over 10 years old that prompted me to but this edition, which was first published in 2016.

Here's the cover which is, on reflection, perfectly appropriate as the main threat in the story (aside from the undefined plans that Dracula has for {England/The Empire/The Western World/The Modern World} is from sexualised vampire women, or turning English roses into sexualised vampire women.

The book is softcover of course (and with the strangely rubberised finish that print-on-demand seem to have now - although I suppose that depends on where they are printed. This one merely states "printed in Great Britain by Amazon". It's large for a paperback, the text block about the dimensions of a trade hardback.



The book has an introduction which covers the topics one would expect - biographical notes on Stoker, the novel's reception, the main character's cultural afterlife and so on. Having been reading up on the subject I quibbled with some of what is said here (for example, discussing screen portrayals, Kellermeyer says Louis Jourdan's 1977 Dracula for the BBC inspired Farnk Langella's cinema version two years later, but Langella was already playing the role on stage in 1977).

Kellermeyer notes three main sources for the notes annotating the text, Leonard Wolf's 1975 Annotated Dracula, Leslie Klinger's New Annotated Dracula, and (at one remove as Klinger uses him) Clive Leatherdale's Dracula Unearthed. As I had wanted to see an up-to-the-minute scholarly view of the book, I read that a little ruefully.

Here's a view of the book open near the beginning of the story, showing the text and some of professor Kellermeyer's annotations.

There are some typos and some awkward typesetting (an almost blank page because of a collision of extensive annotating and a full page illustration for example that a professional typesetter would have been able to fix, but in general the book is well set and the typeface and size well chosen. To offset my criticisms, I have to say that I found it a pleasure to read the story in this edition.

-

A word or two about the illustrations. I said they're vigorous. They don't always work, Kellermeyer's grasp of anatomy especially is decidedly wonky in some of the illustrations (they can be seen on the page for this novel on the Oldstyle Tales website, by the way), but he has some definite successes in the portraits of the main characters. Here's a half-vampirised Mina.



And this portrait of Dracula is I think, superb.

I like this versions of Dracula, too, as its more like how the book describes his appearance.

>36 housefulofpaper:

Where does that cover illustration come from? It doesn't look like the same hand as the rest of Kellermeyer's illustrations and I'm sure I've seen it before, somewhere.

Incidentally, your mention of Blackwood prompted me to searching online and I was astonished at the sheer volume of his output. Don't know if I'd forgotten or never knew. Bought an e-omnibus. With other buys lately I probably now have enough reading here for the next three pandemics ...

>38 alaudacorax:
There’s a credit on the back cover. The picture is “The Bat-Woman” by Albert-Joseph Penot.

The print collections of Blackwood I’ve found have a lot of overlap between the stories (from my phone which is logged into my DVD account).

>39 housefulsfilmtv:

Probably my memory is playing tricks on me and it's that volume I'm remembering.

I think I saw it here as used on a different edition of the book. But it also feels like an image I had seen before that.

It reminds very strongly of Félicien Rops, various images.

>38 alaudacorax:, >39 housefulsfilmtv:, >40 alaudacorax:

I've almost certainly seen that volume before, but I've realised that my immediate familiarity, for some quiet unfathomable reason, was to Brigitte Helm in Metropolis, which I watched a night or two back. No, I can't see the connection either ... now.

>43 alaudacorax:

I've looked at all the covers on Librarything and another edition DID use this painting (thankfully it was near the top of the "pile"). It's reproduced in black and white, and it's an old Penguin Classic with the black and yellow border.

Robot Maria (Brigitte Helm) strikes a similar pose in her seductive dance, I think. But no bat wings.

>44 housefulofpaper:

That's it of course! Now you've pointed it out, I remember I've seen that edition often when browsing around online.

Edward Gorey's Dracula: A Toy Theatre

I finally made this. I've found out through some online sleuthing that it was originally published in 1979 as a spiral-bound book, and that edition now changes hands for well over £100.

This is the third edition which is published as loose cardboard sheets in a sort of oversized cigar box.

A synopsis of the Hamilton Deane/John L. Balderston play is included.

- Act one

- Act two

- Act three

Author! Author!

Oh dear! As I scrolled down to that first image (I'm on a laptop), my first thought was, "He's flashing them!"

>49 frahealee:

These toy theatres weren't a feature of my childhood either but I was aware of them as something (Middle class) Victorian children had. I probably saw examples on a school trip to Pollock's Toy Museum in London - indeed, a quick look on the internet confirms the museum is still there and the attached shop actually sells modern examples of toy theatres.

I haven't seen The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (yet, I have boxes of unwatched DVDs to match my piles of unread books!) but I imagine Terry Gilliam was more likely referencing the Victorian theatres directly - after all, in style and format they're quite close to the images he animated for Monty Python's Flying Circus.



More Dracula ephemera!

Richard Wells, the TV graphic designer who sells horror film-related prints (often in a 17th-century woodcut style (I think they're actually linocuts)) as a sideline, produced some prints of the portrait seen hanging on the walls of Lorimar Van Helsing and Johnny Alucard in Dracula A.D. 1972. I just propped it up on a bookshelf for this picture, but ideally I want to frame it and put it up on the wall. But should I redecorate so it has a suitable setting? And for inspiration, should I go to the academic's study or the vampire acolyte's groovy mews flat? :)

or the vampire acolyte's groovy mews flat?

this this this

remember, you want Goth chicks to feel at home. :)

>48 alaudacorax: my first thought was, "He's flashing them!"

You reminded me of a quote I heard a long time ago.

"There is no such thing as a dirty book; it is just the way you read them."

:-)

I hope you and yours are OK, Andrew.

>54 LolaWalser:

Yes we're all safe, thank you for asking.

Good to know! So sorry about the misery...

>54 LolaWalser:, >55 housefulofpaper:, >56 LolaWalser:

Reading, of course! Looking at those three posts I'd failed to make the connection and was puzzling over them. Such a hateful, pointless waste of lives ... well, if there are people behind Saadallah I suppose 'the point' would have been to stir up hatred between the races, but it's still a hateful waste of lives. I firmly believe that in the killing of innocents religion or politics is just a psychopath's excuse, whether the psychopath is the killer or the person(s) behind them---it takes something other than honestly-held beliefs to motivate you to kill innocent people.

The Limited Editions Club edition of Dracula, published in 1965. Printed letterpress, with illustrations by Felix Hoffmann. It's signed by Hoffmann. Here it is in its slip-case.



And out of its case. This copy still has its protective glassine cover, and it's in pretty good condition.



The cover has an image of Dracula, looking rather louche, behind a cross.



LEC books were issued with a monthly newsletter and it's always better - it makes for a more complete copy - if the newsletter has been retained. Here it is in this very nice copy. There's also a "coming next" announcement for the title, detached from, I guess, the previous month's communication from the Club. This is a very complete edition.



And here's the title page. The introducer, Anthony Boucher, had a career mid-20th Century as a writer editor and anthologist, covering science fiction, fantasy/horror and detection. Interesting in his introduction he states confidently that Stoker missed a trick in not realising his novel's potential as a dramatic property. Clearly the story of the performance (more of a reading) at the Lyceum in order to secure the copyright for a dramatic version, and Sir Henry Irving's dismissive attitude, wasn't at all well known even among the "experts".



Here's the opening of the first chapter.



One of the Illustrator, Felix Hoffmann's, black and white illustrations integrated with the text.




Hoffmann's illustration of "old" Dracula.



There are some full-page colour illustrations too, but Hoffmann uses a very limited palette.



Edited to add: corrected "carry" to "career" in the write-up about Anthony Boucher. Also gave him a touchstone. And took out the repetition of "dramatic version".

>58 housefulofpaper: Very nice. I think I have drool running down my chin.

>59 pgmcc:

I'm very pleased. Especially as it was a bit stressful getting hold of a copy. I ordered one back in May and waited and waited...it didn't turn up. Send an email via AbeBooks. No response. Sent another. Got a message telling me to try the vendor directly. Also saw on the website that I'd waited too long to automatically get a refund but would have to negotiate directly with the vendor. Sent an email. No response. Phoned them and got the beginnings of a story about the warehouse and a promise to get back to me (like they know there's an issue somewhere along the line). Got an email apologising but the book was no longer available. To be fair they refunded with no quibble (and an offer of 20% off the next order).

Rashly I went back to AbeBooks and some more editions were listed, so I bought one and thankfully it turned up in good time and in excellent condition.

That's a beautiful book, indeed!

>60 housefulofpaper:

Ugh, so glad it all ended happily.

So how would you rank your Draculas, in terms of preference?

>62 LWMusic:

That wasn't the half of it. i had similar issues with an order from Oak Knoll Press as well! I will try to put up some pictures in the next day or so.

I really don't know how I'd rate them, especially because I'm still buzzing about the fact that the LEC actually turned up and is in such good condition. It might turn out to be the best one to read. It is letterpress, and a nice size (I didn't put the ruler by it when I photographed it; on the shelf it stands about as high as Richard Wells' Dracula portrait - just clearing the next shelf up.

>60 housefulofpaper:

That is a lovely outcome.

I have to admit that when I read your first sentence I was not sure whether you were pleased with having a lovely edition or with my having drool running down my chin. Having read your entire post I am now thinking it was both.

>64 pgmcc:
Well, yes. If you used drool as a way to to say you were envious of my nice book, i admit to a little bit of pride.

However, if you were actually drooling, maybe because you've just undergone a dental procedure or something like that, then no of course not :)

>65 housefulofpaper:
:-)
Thankfully I meant the former; good old fashioned envy.

Bringing this thread back to life because I've just acquired another edition of Dracula: The Annotated Dracula edited by Leonard Wolf, and published in 1975.

Here's the dust jacket:
-

And here's the decorated endpapers, showing one of Sätty's surreal collages. These illustrate scenes from the novel in the style of Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté.


Inside, showing a page of the novel with annotation and an illustration of the Demeter (unlike the New Annotated Dracula there are no colour interior pages).


The text is reproduced from a microfilm of the second printing of the first edition (Archibald Constable and Company, 1897). The stated intention is to "insure the authenticity of the text" but it's at the cost of slightly blurred,or rather blobby, reproduction of that text. to be honest though, I would have expected offset plates made from blown-up microfilm to be worse quality than this.


Another Sätty illustration.


The volume is rounded out with some appendices:
Some maps (actually we do get a splash of colour here: places of interest are numbered in red).
Calendar pages for May to November 1887 (again in red- for all the world like an old-fashioned desk calendar) with the events of the novel noted against the assumed correct dates. The choice of 1887 apparently corresponds with the phases of the Moon that Stoker noted in the novel.
A "select filmography" - a cursory one-pager and now half a century out of date.
A similarly weird and rather insubstantial list of English-language and foreign editions of the novel.

Edited - added "back to life" at the beginning of this post. It seems that I forgot to type it because the next word starts with a "b".

I'd been intrigued and confused by the edition of Dracula illustrated by Edward Gorey. There are various editions, from different publishers and with different covers, and at wildly different prices. I think the interior contents are the same across all the editions but I haven't examined them - this is the only one I've seen.

to the best of my knowledge, the first edition was published in 1996. The illustrations were not newly commissioned but are recyled from Gorey's Dracula toy theatre. Notes, appendices, etc. are by Marvin Kaye. That first edition currently has an asking price of nearly £400 on AbeBooks. This, the current edition, was around £20.

The cover of this edition has a sort of rubber-feel spine and faux-velvet sides (and the illustration is glued on top).




The illustrated endpapers are taken from the toy theatre, of course.


All the other illustrations are from the theatre, such as the character designs.


You can see from the photo above that the spine is decorated with flying bats. There's also a ribbon marker.

Extras in this edition are
- about 10 pages of textual notes
- the short story "Dracula's Guest"
- a sampler of contemporaneous opinion
- a selected Dracula checklist - appearances of the Count in short stories, novels, film an theatre, essays and studies
- a biographical essay on Bram Stoker
- an annotated bibliography of Stoker's principal writings

It's a nice edition but I personally wouldn't go hunting for the 1996 edition (despite some concerns about how sturdy the faux-velvet is on this edition).

Oh dear me! >67 housefulofpaper: is awakening all my avariciousness. I'm drooling over those images, even the front cover (okay, some slight reservations on Sätty's rats—a little 'Wind in the Willows' compared to the real thing). I have absolutely no need for a copy, I must resist, but it's making my plastic cards itch.

I'm afraid I'm not a Gorey fan in this context. Doesn't appeal to me at all. I seem to remember someone posted images here of one those cardboard theatre sets, and he rather appealed to me there, but carried over to an actual edition of the novel he's just not working for me. Actually, as I've been writing this, the back of mine my mind has been trying to work out who the cleric was—I was vaguely thinking of Anthony Hopkins as the priest in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Then I noticed the small print, 'Lucy Westenra'. Hmm. On further inspection, it looks like Viginia Woolf having serious doubts about her dressmaker ...

Edited - 'mine mind'?!

>69 alaudacorax:
I have absolutely no need for a copy - same here of course. I think I now have TEN editions of the novel.

Yes, that was me with the toy theatre too.

Gorey has a particular aesthetic. One thing that's not always noted is that he was a great fan of ballet. You can see it in the way his figures stand, and how they place their feet. It's only fair to remember that these are designs for little stand-up cardboard figures and not ever intended as book illustrations.

>70 housefulofpaper: - It's only fair to remember that these are designs for little stand-up cardboard figures and not ever intended as book illustrations.

That makes sense. I'd either forgotten or hadn't realised that.

That Sätty edition has reopened a debate I've been having with myself lately.

Despite my inability to resist buying this or that (Is there a psychiatrist's term for a compulsive book-buyer?), I have never thought of myself as a book collector. I certainly have no desire to have battered and musty, old, first editions round the place here—the 1897 Dracula mentioned in >67 housefulofpaper: doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. But I keep seeing attractive, nicely-illustrated, hardback copies of my favourite books and they are such a temptation! I genuinely see no point in having them and I genuinely really, really want them.

Just a short time ago, by route of the reading I was doing on the god Pan, I found myself reading the 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn' chapter in The Wind in the Willows. My copy isn't illustrated. Almost before I knew it I was online and having to forceably restrain myself from buying copies with the classic Arthur Rackham and E. H. Shepard illustrations. And I still really want them. And then there are all those illustrated Poe editions ...

So, is it time to give in and admit to myself to being a (gulp) BOOK COLLECTOR? To accept the no doubt substantial financial outlay that will equally undoubtedly occur once I give in to it?

And it would get worse—it would, no doubt again, finally force me into buying those extra bookcases and I would be bound to end up with empty shelf-space just aching to be filled—temptation on temptation.

I've just realised that LibraryThing is hardly an unbiased place to be asking these questions. Oh well, I was only thinking aloud anyway ...

>71 alaudacorax:

On the bright side, I've seen so many nice editions I'd really, really like that it would probably take me months to choose between them ...

I have an earlier edition of that same Gorey illustrated version and I have to say I love it. And, if memory serves, the toy stage (which I also have) was taken from Gorey's sets for the play Dracula for which he won a Tony for best costumes and set design (1977).

>73 Bookmarque:

Yes, you're right. This article confirms it and has some photos. It also explains the setting is moved to the 1920s, in line with the original stage version.

https://crimereads.com/edward-gorey-designed-the-sets-for-the-1970s-broadway-run...

>71 alaudacorax:, >72 alaudacorax:

My mind has got so perverse these days that having written those posts has prompted me into wasting hours over the last few days looking for nice editions of my favourite books ...

>60 housefulofpaper:
That is an upsetting experience, but thankfully the vendor was honourable, apologised, and returned your money.

>71 alaudacorax:
(Is there a psychiatrist's term for a compulsive book-buyer?)

I checked. The term is, "Normal!"

Well, at least I hope it is.

>77 pgmcc:

It gets more complicated. I'd just about got to the 'Sod it—you can't take it with you!' stage when I found myself asking myself why I was worrying about 'nice editions' when there is a stack of 'softcovers will do' on my wish lists that I would certainly read a lot sooner.

Brain like a hamster on a wheel ... I've been here before ... many times ...

>76 pgmcc:
Yes so far (touch wood etc.) all my online transactions through Abe Books and eBay have been positive.

>78 alaudacorax:
I don't disparage paperbacks by any means but they can only go so far in exhibiting the "book arts" - paper, printing, binding etc. And most paperbacks are printed on pulp paper that will slowly self-destruct through the release of acid as the cellulose breaks down. It's like a memento mori, looking into a book bought this century and it's already browning around the edges.

On top of which, modern reasons to favour a hardcover over a paperback are, publishers like Penguin who will bring out a big non-fiction book with tiny print instead of splitting the title across two or three volumes; and not laminating the cover (so you can't read the book in the bath without damaging it).

There are lots of great editions of this wonderful book! I was looking for something a bit different and came across this 2012 HarperCollins version that I found quite interesting. While I don't generally consider myself a comic book/graphic novel fan, the illustrations that Becky Cloonan did for this version fit the book very well, and there are a lot of them woven into the story. In addition, there are some interesting design elements including the cover which is mostly matte but has an embossed image of the Count with gloss applied, as well as a few places where there are key text passages written across the page to add emphasis. Construction is good, the pages are of decent weight and have a smooth matte finish, and the binding appears to be a sewn text block. The paper looks more cream colored in the photos than it really is. Overall, when combined together it gave a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience!

>80 ExLibrisDavid:

Oo, quite like the look of that one. Not too sure about the last image, with the big lettering across the pages, but not to the extent of it putting me off. Am I right in saying that there is a graphic novel version by Becky Cloonan and that these illustrations are a sample, as it were, of the illustrations of that one?

>81 alaudacorax:

Got that last question wrong. There's a good write-up on the book here - http://www.multiversitycomics.com/previews/becky-cloonans-dracula-is-a-gorgeous-...

Edited to add - that write-up makes the book even more tempting.

We might want to continue this discussion in a new thread - this one no longer loads properly. That happens quicker with image-heavy threads like this one.

>83 Julie_in_the_Library:

Yeah, it's very slow-loading for me, too. For some reason, though, the link, 'Continue this topic in another topic' isn't showing for me. Nor in the 'Gothic gossip' thread. I wonder if they have to be a certain length for LT's software to show it. I don't know if there's a way to force it?

>84 alaudacorax:

Actually, once it has properly opened, I can jump from beginning to end or vice versa pretty much instantly.

>82 alaudacorax:
I talked about a complete comic adaptation of Dracula (written by John Reppion and Leah Moore) in the other Dracula thread. Maybe you're thinking of that?

I didn't post any pages from it at the time. The art is mainly by Colton Worley, although for undisclosed reasons other arists took on two-fifths of it (the book was originally released as a five-issue mini series). The art is, basically, painted; but with what I take to be a lot of digital "post-production" manipulation. You can see it on Amazon, using their "look inside" feature.

>80 ExLibrisDavid:
I don't remember seeing that edition before. It's not currently available from Amazon UK, and the only copies listed on AbeBooks are in the US. I did find an earlier version that she illustrated, adapted for younger readers, and that's very much in the style of Japanese Manga. (or is that the one alaudacorax was thinking of?) The Manga influence is in these later illustrations too, I think. It's in the way the figures hold themselves and their facial expressions, even more than the pen- or brushwork.

I don't know if, when I was reading the book, I'd find the words printed across the text distracting. I don't like things that disturb the reading experience (I'm not keen on Amaranthine Book's decision to print a passage in bold oppsite a full page illustration, so that it doubles as a caption to the picture, for the same reason).