Stoker, Bram

London. 1973. Gollancz. 1st British Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0575014962. Edited by Charles Osbourne. 224 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration courtesy of Peter Haining. keywords: Literature England Ireland. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Dracula, first published in 1897, has never since been out of print, has been translated into many languages, and latterly has acquired a new fame in the cinema. But most of Bram Stoker's other works are neglected today, and unjustly so. The present collection introduces the reader to some of his best short stories - splendidly blood-curdling masterpieces. Stoker, a Dubliner, came to London at the invitation of Henry Irving, as his business manager; and the plays at the Lyceum must often have been a stimulus to his macabre fancy. His first venture into fiction was Under the Sunset, ostensibly a book of stories for children, but already his imagination was often grim and dark - as ‘The Invisible Giant', which we include here, will prove. A novel, The Snake's Pass, followed, and from this the chapter called ‘The Gombeen Man' has been included here: a tale of a voracious money-lender who is punished by the forces of nature for his greed. During a visit to the east coast of Scotland, Stoker came upon a remote fishing village which he made the setting for the long story, ‘The Watter's Mou' ‘, an immensely dramatic tale of a smuggling venture which ended in tragedy, and for a second story in this collection, ‘Crooken Sands', a truly chilling tale of a doppelganger - or what seems to be one. A visit to Paris yielded ‘The Burial of the Rats', a gruesome tale with an extraordinary milieu; and a trip to Nuremberg with Irving led to ‘The Squaw', the tale of a cat's grisly revenge. The full flavour of the ghost story at its spine- tingling best is to be found both in ‘The Secret of the Growing Gold', in which the hair of a murdered wife entraps her killer, and in ‘The Judge's House', which is among the most terrifying stories ever written. inventory #6864 ISBN: 0575014962.