A signed letter by Dracula author Bram Stoker is up for sale in London, offering rare insight into the often enigmatic author’s mind.
The handwritten letter, sent to an unidentified man referred to as “Mr Williams”, was authored weeks after the publication of Dracula and includes an almost unprecedented reference to the novel by name.
“I send you Dracula & have honoured myself by writing your name in it,” Stoker writes in part of the letter. “How is enclosed for high? Lord forgive me. I am quite shameless. Yours ever, Bram Stoker”
Stoker’s vampire novel was published in 1897, and went on to become a seminal text within the gothic genre. The story and character have served as the basis for innumerable films and TV series, and the character of Count Dracula is among the most famous literary creations of all time.
Few of Stoker’s letters survive to this day, and most are characterised as being impersonal and formal. The item up for sale is a rare instance of the author offering an unguarded glimpse into his feelings about his work.
Bayliss Rare Books is selling the letter for £15,000. A press release describes the letter as “informal, insightful, and dated just weeks after the book’s, making it one of the earliest and most candid authorial commentaries on the now-legendary novel”.
“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,” said Bayliss owner and founder Oliver 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.”
After publication, Dracula went on to define the image of the vampire in the popular imagination. It has been directly adapted into film several times, including the 1958 version, which starred Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, and in 1992, when Gary Oldman played the Count in a version directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
The novel also inspired the 1922 German film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which refrained from using the Dracula brand to avoid copyright infringement. That film was recently remade into the 2024 horror film Nosferatu, starring Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp.
