Dracula - Best & Worst covers

[dem]

Feb 20, 2009 17:53:49 GMT andydecker said:

Guess you could do a non-fiction book about Dracula editions

But the Arrow stuff are not the best there are. (Come to think of it, are there really good Dracula covers?)

Can't quite manage a book, Andy, so we'll have to make do with a Dracula gallery. At least it's one of those 'you can all join in' threads that proper horror boards do as surely, everyone has a copy of Dracula?

The 'Library of the Occult' was to be the big thing. Sphere really churned them out — 18 titles were published by the end of 1974. The first book in the series was yet another reprint of Dracula. Not a wise choice as so many paperback publishers were reissuing it that year. Arrow Books for one, Fontana for another .... there were so many that in one of the November, 1974, issues of Newsagent and Bookshop I wrote a three-page article on the sudden burgeoning of the Dracula industry .....

- Peter Tremayne Tremayne Unborn!, Paperback Fanatic #9, Feb. 1992.

Covers shown: L-R in order of appearance:

Constable, 1st Paperback edition, 1901
Sphere, 1974
Arrow 1975
Arrow 1970, 1971
Pocket 1972
Doubleday 1970 (art: Frank Frazetta)

[andydecker]

Here are two Dracula editions from my collection. These are translations. I have also two english editions somewhere. Have to find them first

This one is a classic. It is the paperback-edition from 1979, 4th reprint of an 1968 Hardcover. It is a fine translation from a guy named Stasi Kull, which is still in circulation. I guess for current readers it is a chore to read because it has become very old-fashioned. I like it a lot. Dtv was at the time a publisher of established literature only. They wouldn´t have been caught dead publishing a horror novel Note the tasteful inoffensive cover This was part a classic line. They also did Frankenstein and Melmoth and so on.

This is a new(er) edition from 1993 from Bastei. It tried to jump on the Coppola wagon. This is a new translation, and it is quite fascinating to see how different it is. No two translations are alike, if you see the broad picture, and this has a much more modern slant.

At the time is was a cheap edition. See the sticker. 10 Deutschmark only. Which, come to think of it, wasn´t that cheap. Today that would be 5 Euros. God, I miss the Deutschmark. Today the average paperback costs 8,95, a hardcover between 19 and 25 Euros. Sigh.

The cover is godawful. And not in a good sense ;D And it has the worst and most idiotic byline in the history of horror. It says: The first and best Dracula novel of world-literature. Like it was a series, where the guy who wrote the first novel just happened to be the best of the bunch.

I just checked on Amazon Germany, how many different editions of Dracula are for sale today. It is over a 100. Sure, 95% are out of print and the count includes critical studies. Still, show me any 100 and counting years old horror novel that had that much different editions. There are paperbacks, hardcovers, abriged YA editions, school editions and audio books.

Not bad for an at the time rather obscure stage manager

[dem]

Thanks andy. Maybe it's because they're still something of a novelty to me, but i love the German editions you post. They always seem to fall in to the brilliant or awful category, but, to these eyes at least, they're never dull. You can't ask for more in a cover.

The Hienemann Guided Readers Edition (1982) is like a bluffer's guide, Stoker rewritten by Margaret Tarner and condensed into 48 pages of large-ish print, illustrated rather sweetly by Kay Mary Wilson. There's a glossary, introductory notes and even a quiz at the end so you can bone up on important plot developments and stuff to further convince your friends that you're in the habit of reading sprawling gothic horror classics. Cover photo is by Chris Yates.

Covers shown: L-R in order of appearance:

Signet/NAL Oct. 1965
Hienemann 1982
Bantam, 1998
Scholastic, 1971

[lobolover]

Im a litle confused there, dem. Which one is the " Hienemann" edition?

[dem]

Fair point. I've added publishers/ dates to the foot of both posts. The Hienemann is the one featuring the shadowy caped figure watching some bats.

May as well expand this to include Dracula 'sequels' and the like as they may be more fun ....

Raymond Rudorff - The Dracula Archives (Pocket, July 1973) "Non-Fiction", according to the publisher. Pretty colours.
Peter Tremayne - The Revenge Of Dracula (Dell, 1981). Nice perm.

Two undisputed Vault Gold Medal Award winners.

Ken Johnson - Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula. Found it's spiritual home at the mighty Everest in 1977.

Etienne Aubin - Dracula And The Virgins Of The Undead (NEL, 1974). the possible exception of Eat Them Alive, no other novel has quite stacked up the plaudits on here quite like Mr. Aubin's impenetrable masterpiece.

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

The Arrow 70/71 edition with the hand on shoulder photo was the first edition of "Dracula" I read. My dad borrowed it from a workmate, because I was a right little Dracula nut as a kid. I just remember him telling me to go out into the hallway and take a look in his jacket pocket, and there it was. Can still recall finding it odd that Drac disappears for ages, and that he was an old bloke with a moustache and not Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi or Louis Jourdan.

[dem]

It was the straw hat that threw me. It wasn't even black!

The Arrow' 70/71 is a favourite of mine , Lurks. Quite a few editions have passed through my hands, but i was never going to get rid of that one. Just sorting through covers that might be appropriate for this, strikes me that as a rule it's the ones that steer well clear of the over-familiar Lugosi, C. Lee, Jourdan imagery that hold up better.

[lobolover]

I hate covers with plain photographs without any blurring or editing. It looks cheap and in a sense, fake.

[andydecker]

This is an annotated edition of Dracula from 1993. An uninspired movie cover. Maybe it is my hate of remakes, but I thought the remake of Nosferatu always just awful. Nothing can beat Max Schreck´ iconic count.

The next one doesn´t really belong in this thread. It is a new novel from comic publisher Dark Horse, their prose "continuation" of the Universal monstermovies. It is a nice drawing.

I never had the time to read this, but the premise at least sounds interesting. It is the end of WWI and Carfax Abbey is now a veteran hospital. Enter Miss Lisa Watson, a liberated young woman who wants to work as a staff psychiatrist. And Dracula resurrects. It seems to be more straightforward than Elisabeth Hand´s sequel to Frankenstein´s Bride, which somehow put the bride and Praetorius to Weimar´s Berlin.

[dem]

John Shirley - Dracula In Love (Zebra, Aug. 1979)

The moment I saw the letter I felt an ominous sensation. It was addressed to me: Vladimir Horescu.
There was nothing really outwardly extraordinary about the letter's envelope.
It was of linen paper, hard to find nowadays.
Why did I hesitate to open it?
Why did I hold it in both hands, at arm's length, discoloring the envelope with the sudden perspiration of my fingers?
Why did I stare at the red wax signet on the back of the envelope? The wax seal with the signet V.
It was the embodiment of all mischief and unpleasantry. Finally I opened the envelope, spread it on the desk, swallowed hard and read: My Son! Know me: I am your Father
It was signed Vladislav Draco II, Son of the Dragon, known by some as DRACULA.

The 'Prez' of the Count Dracula Fan Club once selected this as the worst ever Dracula novel, which it ain't, though it is certainly .... strange, and the sex - with the dead - gets pretty extreme. The modern day incarnation of the old Count is a snappy dresser (army fatigue chic, mirror shades, etc.) who commands a Nazi detail in South America, a sub-Manson Family in the States. Shirley being a Cyberpunk author, this is as much a twisted SF novel as a Gothic horror, and if you've read it, you'll realise just how inappropriate the rather fetching, romantic cover really is.

[andydecker]

Here is an anthology and a novel.

This one was edited by P.N. Elrod, whose supersoft and boring vampire novels I came to loath. I bought it cheap on amazon marketplace because of the well know writers. I only read a couple of the stories, and they all were blah. Just like the cover.

This one is an oddity. Nancy Kilpatrick writing as Amarantha Knight. It is part of an series where Kilpatrick more or less re-wrote the classic horrors as kinky s/m porn. Cover is very tame compared to, say, Black Lace.

[dem]

*types 'Black Lace' into Google image search*

I didn't mind the first couple of Enrod's to be honest, though, as a vampire series, they've a long way to go before they're Mr. Lory's Dracula Returns!

Patricia N. Elrod - Bloodlist: Vampire Files #1 (Ace, March 1990)

The blurb:

I've always had a weak spot for strange ladies. One very beautiful girl had even warned me that she was - get this - a vampire.
But did I listen?
No.

Well, before you know it, I'm being chased by an ugly thug with a gun, and a bullet blasts its way through my back, and - believe it or not nothing happened. I survived!
How?

You guessed it. I, Jack Fleming, ace reporter, have been transformed into .... a vampire! Which has its advantages. You never die, you never grow old, you sleep all day, and best of all ... you can hunt down your own murderer. .

The first of eleven novels detailing Fleming's adventures, and Elrod doesn't hang about. Our hero is run down in the opening sentence and by page two he's taken two fatal bullet wounds. A few short paragraphs later and he's back on his feet, grilling the hired gunman for the name of whoever it was put him up to it.

And it keeps up that relentless pace throughout.

Set in Chicago and Cincinnati somewhere around the 1930's, the early chapters are taken up with Jack acclimatising to his tricky situation. In life, he was one of the good guys and so he's none too keen on this drinking-blood-from-innocent-maidens lark. Daylight, he soon learns, is a no-no. So what's he going to sleep in? What about his native soil? Can he still take a bath? Can he still cut it as a ladies man? He's just about got his head around these complexities when some rotter steals his trunk-load of dirt and asks him to call around for it!

As it happens, this is a lucky break. The thief is Charles Escott, English gent and vampire obsessive. He's big on Dracula and wants to know how accurate Stoker really was. They strike up an initially uneasy friendship but its no secret that Escott shares Jack's adventures throughout the series and proves himself to be a thoroughly good egg.

So, Jack's found a friend, and he knows who put the finger on him but not why - the assassin mentioned something about a 'list'. Can he bring his murderer to justice? And what about the girl who vampirized him, is she going to show up again?

[allthingshorror]

Armada 1986




Into Castle Dracula, a forbidding fortress in the depths of Transylvania, where a satanic count haints the night and preys upon the innocent, walks a fearless young solicitor, Jonathan Harker.

Will he survive the deadly traps and cunning pitfalls laid by the centuries-old adversary, or will the bloodthirsty aristocrat claim another unfortunate victim?

Only YOU can decide, and only your skill, good fortune and intuition will determine who will triumph.

In this new Horror Classic gamebook, YOU can choose whether to play the part of the vampire-hunter, or of his arch-enemy, the vampire count himself!

Based on Bram Stoker's famous novel, Dracula

For those of us not able to play on the only BBC Master Compact in the school, these role-playing books were the only half decent distraction from girls who were starting to look weird and sessions of British Bulldog that left your skull swelling every lunchtime.

Had a root about the loft and found this, still surprisingly intact from the last time I read it, so when I was about twelve, which doesn't bode well and means that it was proably crap. Looking in it, I see my childhood scrawling on Dracula's Adventure Record - words like Flintlock and Medallione (I was never the best of spellers.) Trying to play it this afternoon, just confused me - and yes, it is crap. I believe there is another book to the series, The Curse of Frankenstein.

And it's good to see a lovely rendition of Pissedoffer Lee looking suitably angry that he's had to don the robes and teeth again...

[chastel]

Mar 15, 2009 11:36:51 GMT andydecker said:

Here is an anthology and a novel.

This one was edited by P.N. Elrod, whose supersoft and boring vampire novels I came to loath. I bought it cheap on amazon marketplace because of the well know writers. I only read a couple of the stories, and they all were blah. Just like the cover.

[

´
This is one of my favorite vampire collections - Dracula in Victorian London! Yai! Like the cover too.

"Artsy" Finnish version from Midnight Library series.

[jonathan122]

Technical inability restrains me from posting the cover to the 1967 Arrow edition - suffice it to say that somebody had decided that plastic fangs were too expensive, and thus the Count's teeth appear to have been made out of, umm..., rice-paper...

They do, however, portray Dracula with a moustache, which seems to be pretty rare.