Bram Stoker - The Lair of the White Worm

William Collins

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Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from

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Cover by e-Digital Design. Cover image: 1911 1 stedition illustration by Pamela Colman Smith, courtesy Wikicommons

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Source ISBN: 9780008110505

Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008110512

Version: 2014-12-18

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The Lair of the White Worm was published the year before Bram Stoker’s death, in 1911. Like Dracula the tale was loosely based on folklore, a fable from the north-east of England featuring a serpentine dragon named the Lambton Worm. There were many variations on the story; part of an oral tradition of storytelling, different narrators had adapted and embellished it over the centuries.

Stoker’s nightmarish monster lives in a lair and terrorizes the characters in the novel, and the plot is ultimately a classic tale of good versus evil. To reflect this theme the novel was also titled The Garden of Evil . Despite following the author’s success with Dracula , the novel was well-received and has since become something of a classic in the horror genre.

The original novel included a number of illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith, one of which is featured on the cover of this edition. She met Stoker in 1900 when both were involved with the Lyceum Theatre Group. He was the business manager and she the costume designer.

When Stoker published his definitive story of Count Dracula the vampire, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had already been in print for 69 years and had enjoyed great success. It told a similarly satanic story of a Victor Frankenstein who fabricated a corpse, brought it to life using electricity and suffered the consequences of interfering with nature. Clearly the Victorian public had a taste for literature that served to chill and thrill, so Dracula had an interested and ready readership.

In the story of Dracula , an English businessman, named Jonathan Harker, visits Count Dracula in his Eastern European castle to organize his estate. He soon finds himself trapped by Dracula and is subjected to all manner of frightening and supernatural horrors, however he manages to escape, only to be followed back to England. Dracula arrives in the form of a satanic beast, who has fed on the blood of sailors whilst crossing from the continent. The crewless ship is wrecked and rescuers find only the captain’s account of supernatural events onboard his ship. There is also a cargo of Transylvanian soil, which Dracula has brought with him as a home from home.