Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Tales (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Bram Stoker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141441712 ISBN 13: 9780141441719

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2006

Synopsis

Although Bram Stoker is best known for his world-famous novel Dracula, he also wrote many shorter works on the strange and the macabre. This collection, comprising Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories, a volume of spine-chilling short stories collected and published by Stoker's widow after his death, and The Lair of the White Worm, an intensely intriguing novel of myths, legends and unspeakable evil, demonstrate the full range of his horror writing. From the petrifying open tomb in 'Dracula's Guest' to the mental breakdown depicted in 'The Judge's House' and 'Crooken Sands', these terrifying tales of the uncanny explore the boundaries between life and death, known and unknown, animal and human, dream and reality.

About this title

Review:

Having demonstrated a wry touch in his reading of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories, narrator Rupert Degas shifts gears smoothly with his narration of nine lesser-known works of terror from the author of Dracula. The title story - a section of the famous novel cut prior to publication - is a splendid introduction to both Stoker and Degas. Within a few short passages, the experiences of English solicitor Jonathan Harker, on business in Europe, change dramatically - particularly when he hears warnings against travelling on Walpurgis Night. Without added sound effects, Degas makes the reader hear the threatening cries and quiet isolation Harker experiences after his driver abandons him as night falls. A versatile array of accents enables Degas to ably portray all the stories' many characters. Burial of the Rats, in which a tourist to France must flee for his life, is another highpoint. --Publishers Weekly

About the Author:

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (1847-1912), Irish writer, best known for his vampire novel Dracula(1897). His other works include The Mystery of the Sea (1902), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), The Man (1905) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911).

Kate Hebblethwaite is a Research Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. She whas published a number of articles on popular fiction authors of the nineteenth and twentieth century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0141441712
• ISBN 13: 9780141441719
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464
• Editor: Kate Hebblethwaite