Rare Bram Stoker letter reveals what he really thought about Dracula

Telegraph

16-04-2025

Bram Stoker's Dracula was not the immediate success one might have expected for such a haunting gothic horror.
While critics gave the novel positive reviews at the time, it was not until after Stoker's death in 1912 that it became a bestseller, and has never been out of print since.
The discovery of a rare letter has revealed Stoker himself was confident his novel would grab the public's attention and go on to stand the test of time.
The letter was recently discovered by a rare books dealer among a private collection acquired from a buyer in the United States. It was written by Stoker to a friend weeks after its initial publication in 1897.
In it, he describes his confidence that Dracula will be regarded as 'high' literature and not just a piece of pulp horror.
Writing to the friend, referred to only as Mr Williams, Stoker states: 'I send you Dracula & have honoured myself by writing your name in it.'
He adds: 'How is enclosed for high? Lord forgive me. I am quite shameless. Yours ever, Bram Stoker.'
Letters by Stoker are rare and, according to experts, those in which he mentions his novel Dracula by name are virtually unheard of. Fewer than a handful are known to exist, and those are typically formal acknowledgements.
By contrast, this letter is informal and prescient, making it one of the earliest and most candid authorial commentaries on the novel, according to Oliver Bayliss, the rare book dealer who acquired it.
'This letter gives us something we've never really had before: Stoker's own voice, responding to Dracula around the moment it entered the world, not as an icon of horror but as a new, uncertain work,' he said.
'Stoker clearly, and with just cause, felt it was a high watermark in his writing. However, early reviews were mixed and Dracula didn't become the legend it is for many, many years thereafter.'
Stoker's letter is expected to fetch thousands when it goes on sale in the next few weeks. In the world of literary collecting, letters by authors commenting on their most significant works, especially so close to publication, are among the most sought-after artefacts.
When those letters contain the title itself, in the author's own hand, and offer some flavour of personality or insight, they are considered exceptionally rare, says Mr Bayliss.
'Stoker's humorous aside – 'Lord forgive me. I am quite shameless' – has the ring of an artist knowingly pushing the boundaries of the gothic and enjoying it. It's theatrical, cheeky, and utterly authentic. That tone simply doesn't appear in his other known correspondence on the subject,' he adds.
Mr Bayliss said Mr Williams was probably a friend or colleague in the London theatre world, where Dublin-born Stoker worked at the time.
'It's rather special for me to bring the letter back to London, the city where Dracula was first published and where the letter was, in all likelihood, written while Stoker was managing the Lyceum Theatre,' Mr Bayliss said.
Dracula was published while Stoker worked at The Daily Telegraph in London as one of this newspaper's literary staff.
In 1890, he had travelled to Whitby, where the North Yorkshire coastal town provided him with the setting for Count Dracula's arrival in England.
After coming ashore at Whitby, the Count, transmogrified into the shape of a black dog, runs up the 199 steps to the graveyard of St Mary's Church in the shadow of Whitby Abbey's ruins.