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Post by dem on Jul 22, 2021 7:36:01 GMT
Peter Haining [ed] - Shades of Dracula: Uncollected Stories of Bram Stoker (William Kimber, 1982) Peter Haining - Introduction
Bram Stoker - The Crystal Cup
Bram Stoker - The Chain of Destiny
Bram Stoker - The Castle of the King
Bram Stoker - The Fate of Fenella
Anonymous - Vampires in New England
Bram Stoker - Walpurgis Night
Bram Stoker - The Seer
Ralph Milne Farley - Another Dracula?
Bram Stoker - At Last
Bram Stoker - In the Valley of the ShadowBlurb: Bram Stoker is a household name as the creator of Count Dracula and will always be associated with vampires and Transylvanian castles. Over the years he has attracted a wide following including Stephen King, himself a renowned author in this field, who bemoaned the fact that his 'absolutely champion short stories' were so little known.
Now Peter Haining has gathered Bram Stoker’s previously uncollected short stories together and with his usual expertise presents us with an enthralling collection. The editor‘s commentary shows that he was indeed a master of the horror narrative and how the creation that was Dracula developed in his mind. C. C. Senf: ( Weird Tales, Sept. & Oct 1930) A two-part serial about the superstitious vampire-terror that held a Pennsylvania town in its grip. Dr. Ralph Crane loves Mary Morton, and vice versa. Her Pop, the storekeeper, however, is reliant on Mary marrying money to keep the business afloat, and that means tying the knot with Herman Fulton, ruthless young banker, who pretty much owns the community of Yankton and everyone in it. A mysterious man in black named Peter Larousse arrives in town. Larousse claims to suffer with a tropical disease which makes his skin allergic to ultra-violet rays, hence his only conducting business after nightfall. Said business apparently amounts to creeping around a vault in Yankton cemetery. Bitten by a june bug - or possibly a huge bat - Mary falls victim to pernicious anaemia, before Fulton can get her up the aisle. Once they've laid Mary in the ground, Fulton visits the town library, reads a book on vampires and puts two and two together. This Larousse son of a bitch is another Dracula! Dr. Crane, meanwhile, has upped sticks for New York. One night he receives a visit from Mary's ghost. The apparition mournfully explains that she's been buried alive! Won't Ralph help her? She has already appealed to her fiance, but Fulton refuses to listen. In fact, he's leant on the townsfolk to accompany him to the cemetery because tonight he intends dig up both Larousse and Mary, cut off their heads, stuff their mouths with garlic, drive stakes through their stinking undead hearts. This ridiculous story is way too long for it's meagre plot, some of the padding is worthy of R. Lionel Fanthorpe and I so love that Haining revived it. Sample great bit: It was Mary - or Mary's ghost! But it couldn't be her ghost, for there are no such things as ghosts. So it must be Mary herself. But Mary was dead. But she couldn't be dead, for here she was. What was she doing in New York City? And in his room! And at this time of night! His Mary, at last! Could it be true?Anonymous - Vampires in New England: ( New York World, 2 Feb 1896). Newspaper report. Begins with an account of mass grave exhumation and corpse-impalement on Rhode Island during a recent cholera epidemic before embarking on world tour of alleged 'vampire' activity throughout history. Also "The superstition as to ghouls is very ancient and undoubtedly of Oriental origin. Generally speaking, however, a ghoul is just the opposite of a vampire, being a living person who preys on dead bodies, while a vampire is a dead person that feeds on the blood of the living. If you had your choice, which would you rather be, a vampire or a ghoul?"
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Post by andydecker on Jul 22, 2021 8:30:54 GMT
Peter Haining [ed] - Shades of Dracula: Uncollected Stories of Bram Stoker (William Kimber, 1982) Ionicus grows on me as an artist, his work for Kimber is remarkable. But on some days I really can't decide if he has a distinct style or just imitates Gahan Wilson. |
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Post by dem on Jul 22, 2021 15:29:05 GMT
It is the same here. I used to despise his Kimber cover paintings as bland and bloodless, now I mostly love 'em. Bram Stoker - At Last: ( Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party, 1908). Long estranged husband and wife are reunited during a cholera epidemic after she braves floodwaters to reach their only child. Happy ending likely to be short lived should she ask how the little girl came by those burnt fingers. Bram Stoker - Walpurgis Night: (" The Story Teller, May 1914"). Aka Dracula's Guest. It comes as no great surprise that BramStoker.org dispute vast majority of dates and sources provided by Mr. Haining, including the above. Truly, the man was incorrigible! |
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Post by dem on Jul 25, 2021 6:24:14 GMT
Bram Stoker - The Seer: Crooken Sands. Narrator experiences a premonition while idly watching three pedestrians. The man briefly outpaces the women and, for an instant, appears to be carrying a small black coffin on his shoulder. The following day, a child's body is washed up in the bay. A gaunt old woman named Gormala MacNeil identifies our hero as one cursed with the gift of the second sight. How would she know that? Because she too has "seen an' heard the Comin o' the Doom." Haining claims to have found this in the London Magazine, Nov. 1901. Not so, insist BramStoker.org. It is merely a two-chapter extract from Stoker's 1902 novel, The Mystery of the Sea.
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Post by dem on Aug 23, 2023 8:31:46 GMT
Almost certainly conceived as a companion volume to Shades of Dracula, Peter Owen picking up many impending William Kimber titles following the publisher's death and, with it, his company. Peter Haining [ed] - Bram Stoker: Midnight Tales (Peter Owen, 2001; originally 1990) W. V. Cockburn ( The Spectre of Doom, Dublin Mail, Nov. 1880). Christopher Lee - 'The Midnight Side'
Peter Haining - Introduction
The Dream in the Dead House
The Spectre of Doom
The Dualitists
Death in the Wings
The Gombeen Man
The Squaw
A Deed of Vengeance?
The Man from Shorrox'
The Red Stockade
Midnight Tales
A Criminal Star
The Bridal of Death Blurb: Horror stories never lose their popular appeal and Bram Stoker is an early master of the genre.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Beefsteak Room at the Lyceum Theatre was the scene for brilliant and cosmopolitan gatherings hosted by the great actor Sir Henry Irving. There, amidst ornate furnishings, with candles casting shadows against the dark panelling, Irving and his guests talked of the theatre and told strange tales of far distant places. Bram Stoker was Irving's manager during these years and such dinner-table conversations provided him with inspiration both for his immortal classic of horror fiction, Dracula, and for the chilling stories in this book.
Opening the collection is a terrifying encounter with a werewolf, a scene from an early draft of Dracula. Here, too, is 'The Squaw', Stoker's most blood-curdling short story, set in a medieval torture chamber. The theatrical world features in 'Death in the Wings', a tale of brutal revenge. Also included is the dramatic finale from the 1903 novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars, with its raising of a mummy from the dead, which so shocked Edwardian readers that it was later expurgated. Some of the stories in this collection have not been reprinted since their original magazine publication, and all display the fascination with the strange and the gruesome that made Bram Stoker a master of the macabre.
'A head-on collision between horror and sexuality.' — The TimesBridal of Death is the original, misery porn conclusion to The Jewel of the Seven Stars which Stoker would later revise at the publisher's request (see also Christopher Frayling, [ed.], The Face of Tutankhamun, 1992). Death in the Wings is better known as The Star Trap. Haining ran it under the latter title in his Greasepaint and Ghosts, 1982. The Dualitists previously appeared in his Tales of Dungeons & Dragons, 1986. The Dream in the Death House is Dracula's Guest to the rest of us. Midnight Tales: Excerpts from Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (" vols, 1906). The Funeral Party (A Widower's Grief), a macabre mother-in-law joke; The Shakespeare Mystery; an Irishman resolves the age-old dispute over who really authored the dramatist's greatest works; and A Deal With The Devil; a child's desperate prayer for deliverance from the beast. You can read them on Bram Stoker. org |
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Post by andydecker on Aug 23, 2023 8:54:48 GMT
Almost certainly conceived as a companion volume to Shades of Dracula, Peter Owen picking up many impending William Kimber titles following the publisher's death and, with it, his company. This is all news to me. Sadly I don't own any Kimber, but I just assumed that they stopped because of economical reasons. Do you have any further infos? Kimber had such a distinctive look and, judging from lists, a clear editorial strategy. The Dualitists previously appeared in his Tales of Dungeons & Dragons, 1986. The Dream in the Death House is Dracula's Guest to the rest of us. A true Haining, putting Stoker and D&D together  |
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Post by dem on Aug 23, 2023 9:23:32 GMT
Almost certainly conceived as a companion volume to Shades of Dracula, Peter Owen picking up many impending William Kimber titles following the publisher's death and, with it, his company. This is all news to me. Sadly I don't own any Kimber, but I just assumed that they stopped because of economical reasons. Do you have any further infos? Kimber had such a distinctive look and, judging from lists, a clear editorial strategy. See first post on this thread for Kimber obituary from a 1991 Ghost Story Society newsletter. William Kimber Ghost & Horror titles (note illo: bride of dem strikes again). Ignore "Peter Owen picking up many impending William Kimber titles following the publisher's death After Kimbers death ... etc", as it was Robert Hale published most of them, including the fifth and final volume of Amy Myers' After Midnight Stories, Chetwynd-Hayes; Kepple, Hell is What You Make It, Shudders & Shivers and the notorious The Psychic Detective, Mary Williams' Creeping Fingers and Trembling Shadows, Haining's Monster Movies .... Me being slapdash, as usual. |
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Post by andydecker on Aug 23, 2023 17:46:44 GMT
Thanks for the link. A lot of interesting information there.
Great illustration by bride of dem, btw. |
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