Introduction

This is a preliminary report about a hitherto lost edition of the world’s most famous and influential vampire novel.

Hutchinson’s Colonial Library edition of Dracula not only states the date “1897” on its title page, but was almost certainly printed simultaneously with – i.e., before or shortly after – the first Constable printing.

Bram Stoker drew up an undated “Memorandum of Agreement” for the publication of Dracula (which was titled “The Un-Dead” in early drafts) which his publisher, Archibald Constable and Company, typed up and revised. Both parties signed the final contract on the 20^th of May 1897.[ii]

It states that: “The Author having written a work called the “UN-DEAD” and being prior to the signing of this agreement possessed of all the rights therein agrees with the Publishers for its publication in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Dependencies (Canada being excepted).“

The contract makes explicit provisions for a colonial edition. Part 5 declares: “The Publishers may with the consent of the Author print and sell a colonial edition (Canada being excepted from the operations of such editions).”

Until now, it had been assumed that the publisher did not exercise this option because no copy of a colonial edition had been found.

Hutchinson’s Colonial Library edition of Dracula is not listed in the British Library Catalogue, The National Union Catalog, Worldcat or in any standard reference work on fantasy or horror, including: Ashley, Barron, Bleiler, Clute, Frank, Locke, Reginald, Tuck, Tymn or Wolff. Graeme Johanson’s A Study of Colonial Editions in Australia: 1843-1972 does not make any reference to it, and there is not even a hint that it exists in thousands of studies about Bram Stoker, Dracula or vampires.

A brief description of the colonial edition is in order:

STOKER, BRAM. Nee: Abraham Stoker, Jr. b. November 8, 1847. d. April 20, 1912.

DRACULA. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1897. [i-vii] viii-ix [ix] [1] 2-390 [391-392] pp. hb. with dark-red binding and gilt lettering. Hutchinson’s Colonial Library Series. Issued for circulation in India and the British Colonies.

The particular features of the copy that was purchased on E-Bay in Auction #1456726870 from Pioneer Books of Melbourne, Australia on August 23, 2001 include:

An old catalog number [“F.433.”] appears on the title page and on page one, and there are three library stamps [“TEA TREE GULLY INSTITUTE”] in the text. The binding has moderate stains, with a large, light stain on the cover and scattered, internal markings. The lettering on the cover and spine is faded. The binding is almost entirely detached from its hinges. This copy is missing the front endpaper, and all but a small piece of the leaf that follows the text [pp. 391-392] has been torn out. However, the rear endpaper is intact and the text is complete, including the printer's colophon.

The previous owner recalls that he obtained it “a very long time ago,” but cannot furnish any additional information.

Tea Tree Gully is northeast of Adelaide. The area was settled in 1857, and re-named “Tee Tree Gully” in October of 1858. The Australian Handbook of 1904 tells us that it had “an institute,” and, at this point, it can be assumed that this institution existed in 1897.

The following comparison of the domestic and colonial editions uses a presentation copy of Dracula – i.e., one of a handful of early copies that is distinguished by the embossment “Presented by Archibald Constable & Co” on its title page – as the basis of comparison. Any differences between these editions are noted in the right-hand column:

	Archibald Constable and Company	Hutchinson & Co.
Cover	: Mustard-yellow binding with red lettering and a red rule.	Dark red binding with gilt lettering.
Cover says:	Dracula / By / Bram Stoker	HUTCHINSON’S COLONIAL LIBRARY is printed in the top right-hand corner.
Spine says:	Dracula / By / Bram Stoker / Constable / Westminster[iii]	DRACULA / BRAM STOKER / HUTCHINSON’S COLONIAL LIBRARY
	No dust jacket. As issued?[iv]
Size:	8vo. – i.e., 7   “ b “ by 5 º.“
Collation and binding:	a. 16-page signature sheets with one 8-page signature at the front of the book. b. Edges of pages untrimmed. c. Bound by hand.	a and b. Note: Missing leaf. Torn out?
a.	Free front endpaper – blank recto.
b.	Free front endpaper – blank verso.
c. Half-title page:	DRACULA / BY / BRAM STOKER
d. Catalog:	BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. / Under the Sunset.” / “The Snake’s Pass.” / “The Water’s Mou.” / “The Shoulder of Shasta.”
e. Cancelled title page:	DRACULA / BY BRAM STOKER / WESTMINSTER / ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY / 1897   ROW / 1897	HUTCHINSON’S COLONIAL LIBRARY / DRACULA / By / BRAM STOKER / London: / HUTCHINSON & CO. / 34 PATERNOSTER
f. Copyright page:	“Copyright, 1897, in the United States of America, according / to Act of Congress, by Bram Stoker. / [All rights reserved.]	This edition is issued for circulation / in India and the British Colonies / only.
g. Dedication page:	TO / MY DEAR FRIEND / HOMMY-BEG
h.	Blank verso.
i.	Contents page.
viii.	Contents continued.[v]
ix.	Contents concluded.
[x].	Text: “How these papers…” Eight lines. This is usually assumed to be part of the text.
[1]. a.	Beginning of text. b. A printer’s mark – “B” – in the bottom right-hand corner.[vi]
2.	First numbered page of text.
17.	Printer’s mark: “C”.
385.	Printer’s mark: “2 C”.
389.	End of text.
390.	a. “Note / When we got… “ Eighteen lines. This is usually assumed to be part of the text. b. Printer’s colophon: HARRISON &SONS, Printers in Ordinary to Her Majesty, St. Martin’s Lane.
[391].	Free flypaper – blank recto.[vii]	[391-2]. Note: Most of this leaf has been torn out, but the remaining fragment appears to be an integral part of the final signature.
[392].	Free flypaper – blank verso.
[393].	Free rear endpaper – blank recto.
[394].	Free rear endpaper – blank verso.

Constable

 

The features of any particular edition can often be understood by referring to other editions and the conditions that gave rise to them. On one hand, the discovery of a colonial edition creates a host of new problems. On the other, it can be likened to an important piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

Dracula is a bibliographic nightmare.

To begin with, there is an extensive pre-textual stage that includes: “Bram Stoker’s Original Notes and Data for his Dracula,”[viii] a copy of his manuscript (The Un-Dead),[ix] a story (“Dracula’s Guest”)[x] and a play.

Prior to the publication of the novel, the author rewrote it as a play to establish his copyright. Dracula: or the Un-Dead was presented to a small group of employees and passers-by at the Lyceum Theatre on Tuesday the 18^th of May at 10:15 a.m.[xi]

The fact that the final contract for Dracula was signed two days later may be indicative of the planning that gave life to Stoker’s creation.

There are also four seminal texts. In addition to the original wording of 1897, both Doubleday & McClure[xii] and William Rider[xiii] made minor changes in the text when they created new editions of Dracula in 1899 and 1912. However, wholesale revisions occur in the abridged paperbound text of 1901 in which Stoker abridged his novel for Constable's Sixpenny Series.[xiv]

Despite the challenges that these variations offer bibliographers, each of them enriches our understanding of the text and the author’s intentions in certain ways.

No one knows when the first edition of Dracula was published. Possible dates range from late May to late June. In a letter to William Gladstone on “May 24/97,” Stoker wrote, “May I do myself the pleasure of sending you a copy of my new novel Dracula which comes out on the 26^th.” It appears that his letter was accompanied by a copy of Dracula. If so, presentation copies must have been flying about no later than May 21^st. Otherwise, Barbara Belford’s claim that “Dracula arrived at the booksellers on May 26, 1897” may be correct.[xv] Other candidates include June 2^nd and June 10^th. Peter Haining and Peter Tremanyne, who were granted access to Constable’s archives, champion the date of “Thursday, 24 June 1897… with the first copies destined for the literary editors of the major national newspapers and magazines” (but do not provide any evidence of this).[xvi]

No matter when Dracula was first published, it was printed in some form well before any of these dates. The original copy of the play “… is partly hand-written and partly pasted into place in sections cut from two proof copies stamped by Harris [sic] and Sons, Printers (a firm of bookbinders based in London).”[xvii]

Every page bears Stoker’s mark. Despite his hurried, often almost illegible handwriting, he put considerable thought into how his novel could best be reworked for the stage. Given the fact that his duties as Irving’s assistant left him little time to write, this task must have taken a month or two. If we split the difference, we can conclude that Dracula had been typeset by the middle of April 1897.

To the dismay of both collectors and dealers, Constable does not identify first editions or distinguish reprints in any systematic way. Early printings of Dracula announce the date “1897” on the title page, but do not contain a statement of edition. (The first one to do so is the “Fifth Edition” of “1898.”) Therefore, collectors and book dealers have had to rely on other means to determine which edition came first.[xviii] A rule of thumb is “the more advertisements, the later the edition.” Evidence from presentation copies and signed editions proves that the “first edition” has a cancelled title page and does not contain any advertising material after the text, while the second has an advertisement for The Shoulder of Shasta on page [392]. The third and fourth editions went through several printings. A few copies do not have a cancelled title page, and at least one has a cancelled dedication page. There are also variations in the texture of the cloth, the thickness of the paper and the number of advertisements. They usually have an ad for The Shoulder of Shasta followed by a catalog of 8, 10 or 16 pages. Differences in the contents and placement of this material abound. For example, there are both full and half-page ads for Dracula.

The only possible conclusion is that Dracula went through numerous printings, and was bound in small lots with whatever materials were available at the time. The fact that it was bound by hand makes this relatively easy to do.

 Colonial Editions

From the middle of the nineteenth century, colonial editions were distributed to four main areas: Africa, Australia, Canada, and India. In addition to providing publishers with an additional source of profit, they offered countries that did not have a large enough population to support a local publishing industry opportunities to enjoy a wide range of literature.

According to Graeme Johanson, “The most important feature of the printing of colonial editions was that it was totally integrated with the printing of original editions, or it was done from stereotype plates made from settings for first or other editions”.[xix]

 

Findings

 

-- The only observable differences between the Constable and Hutchinson editions are the binding, the copyright page and the title page.

-- Both editions were printed from the same plates, and use the same signature sheets. Even the printer’s marks are identical.

-- Both editions were printed by the same printer. Harrison & Sons produced the first eight editions of Dracula. They printed at least seven editions for Archibald Constable and Company from 1897 to 1899, and one for Hutchinson & Co. in 1897. In contrast, the Eighth Edition of 1904 was printed by Butler & Tanner of Frome and London.[xx]

-- The Hutchinson Colonial Library edition is the only other edition that states “1897” on its title page. The fact that it has a cancelled title page leaves no doubt that it was published in the same year as the first Archibald Constable edition (In contrast, many subsequent editions of Dracula reproduce all or part of the original copyright notice on their copyright pages. Reprints that do not state the year in which they were published or number their editions have caused some confusion. More than one collector who has acquired a copy by a publisher such as Doubleday or Grosset & Dunlap has been convinced that they have acquired a first edition.)

-- Colonial editions were always printed in conjunction with their domestic counterparts. Indeed, as Graeme Johanson points out: “… the main purpose of ‘colonials’ was to release new novels simultaneously at home and abroad, and publishers achieved this by use of run-on sheets or stereotype plates.”[xxi] In many cases, “The ‘colonials’ were shipped to Australia weeks in advance of British release to allow a common publication date, and hence were, in effect, the first issues of particular editions.“[xxii]

-- Concomitantly, the colonial edition is either the first or second edition of the best-selling novel in the world.

-- In either case, it stands as the first edition by a publisher other than Constable. (This also means that the first American edition of Dracula, which was brought out by Doubleday & McClure in 1999, falls into third place.)

-- Hutchinson’s edition is the missing link in a series of colonial editions of Bram Stoker’s novels. His previous novel, The Shoulder of Shasta, was published by Archibald Constable & Co. in 1895, and a colonial edition was published by Macmillan and Co. the same year as “No. 230” in Macmillan’s Colonial Library Series. Richard Dalby’s Bram Stoker: a bibliography of first editions, also tells us that The Jewel of Seven Stars of 1903, The Man of 1905, Lady Athlyne of 1908 and The Lady of the Shroud of 1909 were all published “simultaneously” by Heinemann’s Colonial Library.

-- It is possible that Constable choose Hutchinson as the publisher of the colonial edition of Dracula, because they had recently taken on Marie Corelli, whose weird occult thrillers made her the best-selling author in the world.

-- Hutchinson’s colonial edition precedes Rider and Company’s by half of a century.[xxiii]

-- This is the first edition by the Hutchinson, Rider, Arrow, Jarrolds group (now owned by Random House), which assumed the British rights to Dracula in 1912.

-- The pasted in title page in early Constable editions of Dracula has often been attributed to the fact that the title was changed shortly before the novel was published. However, this problem could have been solved by re-typesetting one page of the first signature. With the discovery of the colonial edition, the mystery of the inserted leaf (i.e., the title page and copyright page) can be seen as an economical way to print the text, insert whatever indicia is called for, and bind the book accordingly. Of course, this operation would have to have been planned before the first eight-page signature was typeset.

 

Further Research

Our most important task is to find a copy of the colonial edition with pages [391] and [392]. Although there is usually no correlation between the advertisements in domestic and colonial editions, a date code in the catalog of the colonial edition of The Shoulder of Shasta shows that it preceded the Constable edition by three months. The missing leaf in the copy that has be used for comparison could be blank, but it could also contain an ad for The Shoulder of Shasta or a surprise that is awaiting discovery.

In addition to the Australian edition, there could be an African or Indian impression, or even a (non-colonial) Canadian edition of Dracula.

Bram Stoker’s contract with Constable called for “at least three thousand copies.” Given the rarity of Hutchinson’s Colonial Library edition and the fact that Australia had about one tenth as many people, it may have received as little as 300 copies.

Search colonial libraries for records of this copy, and the dates on they were received. In 1897, it took about five weeks for a shipment to reach Australia, and a week or more to reach many destinations. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the value of any such records in advance. Of course, this also applies to reviews in newspapers or magazines.

The fact of a colonial edition also implies the existence of contracts, royalty statements, advertising material and other materials.

It appears as if the colonial edition was printed in London, but we do not know if the sheets were bound before they were shipped to the colonies. (In either case, this could explain why Constable’s first printing does not proclaim itself the “first edition.”) It is also possible that the sheets for colonial edition were printed at the beginning of the print run, but released at the same time as or later than Constable’s edition.

In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of Richard Dalby, L. W. Currey, Mark Dwor LLD, Graeme Johanson, Brenda Peterson, Pioneer Books, the North-West Book Company, Michael Thomson and White Dwarf Books. Of course, I am responsible for any mistakes in the use or interpretation of the data that they provided. A special note of thanks is due to David Niall Wilson, who discovered Hutchinson's Colonial Library edition of Dracula on E-Bay and brought this rara avis to my attention.

Foreword

Archibald Constable and Company first published Dracula in 1897 and reprinted it eight times over the next twenty-two years. Most subsequent editions of Bram Stoker's masterpiece have been copies from this edition, from the Doubleday edition of 1899, or from the Rider edition of 1912, which corrected many of the typographical errors that occur in the first edition.

Constable also published an abridged paperback edition of Dracula in 1901. However, this edition is virtually unknown today. Given the stature and popularity of Bram Stoker's novel, this can only be attributed to the fact that copies of the revised edition are as rare as autographed first editions of Dracula. This is unfortunate, for the abridged edition contains several points of interest. To begin with, Stoker himself made the revisions. He abridged the text by over 15% (from approximately 162,000 words to 137,000 words), deleting some of the lengthy descriptions and conversations which dominate the first edition, in order to concentrate on the action. He also made minor changes to the text. For instance, in Chapter X, Professor Van Helsing's cumbersome phrase: "make him kick the beam, as your peoples say" is replaced by the more straight-forward "outweigh him." Although some of the atmosphere of the original work has been lost, most authorities agree that the revised edition of Dracula is more readable and, hence, more enjoyable than the common, well-known text.

A republication of this classic work is long overdue. However, it should be noted that the text of the paperback edition was set in double columns of 6-point type, crammed into a mere 138 pages. Therefore, the present edition has been redesigned and retypeset. I have also taken the liberty of correcting obvious mistakes which were carried over from the first edition. Thus, in Chapter IV, the word "to" has been inserted in the sentence: "I have already spoken [to] them through my window to begin an acquaintanceship." In addition, the inconsistent spellings and typographical errors which plague the abridged edition have been eliminated. Finally, the cover of the paperback edition, which is one of the earliest and most memorable depictions of Count Dracula, has been reproduced as an enameled frontispiece.

I would like to think Robert James Leake of the Count Dracula Society for entrusting me with the copy of our favorite novel. His friendship and generosity have made this edition possible.

Robert Eighteen-Bisang

Introduction

It is a pleasure for me to introduce this marvelous reprinting of the 1901 edition of Dracula. The original edition of 1897 was abridged by the author, Bram Stoker, and published in April of 1901. It is republished her along with welcome corrections by Robert Eighteen-Bisang.

This book is important for various reasons. To begin with, the abridgment reads better than the original, well-known novel. This may seem odd, given the fact that Dracula is so popular that it has never been out of print. However, most scholars agree that Stoker's novel needs trimming; there are to many characters in it and too many obviously extraneous passages.

As strange as it may seem, Stoker's notes for Dracula (which are housed at the Rosenbach Foundation in Philadelphia, and are still unpublished) show that the author has originally conceived of an even longer and more convoluted story, with even more characters. How could a man who wrote such potboilers come along with a masterpiece of horror? No one knows. In fact, there are a number of legends about the actual authorship of the novel. H. P. Lovecraft, America's most famous fantasy writer after Poe, even suggested in an unpublished letter, located in the archives of Brown University, that some "old lady" who was offered the job of revising Stoker's Dracula manuscript in the early 1890s found it to be a "fearful mess" but Stoker did not like her price and found someone else who whipped the manuscript into such shape as it eventually acquires. However, in 1984, the discovery of the original Dracula manuscript with Stoker's own handwritten corrections and amendments on virtually every page, proves that he was indeed the author. Any other author would have sensed that the story is just too damn long, and cries out for abridgment. The First edition ran 390 pages, much shorter than Tolstoy's War and Peace, but still too long for a gothic thriller.

The context in which Stoker made his revisions is revealing. In 1898 a huge fire destroyed most of the sets and costumes at Henry Irving's Lyseum Theatre, where Bram was manager. The sixty-year-old Irving oscillated between severe depression and rage. So it was left to Bram to clean up the mess. In shouldering the burdens caused by this crisis, the physically exhausted Bram contracted a severe case of pneumonia, which took months to heal.

In 1900, between tours by Henry Irving's Theatrical Company, Bram Stoker and his wife, the pre-Raphaelite beauty Florence, stayed at a little hotel called the Kilmarnock Arms (which still exists) at Cruden Bay on the east coast of Scotland. Cruden Bay had become the Stoker's favorite vacation spot. This is where Bram put the final touches on the first edition of Dracula after seven years of serious research and writing. And it was also at Cruden Bay that he abridged the text. He cut some 25,000 words from the text of 1897 in order to accommodate Constable's sixpenny-paperback format, He wrote facing Slains Caste across from Cruden Bay village, one of the possible visual inspirations for Castle Dracula.

About one year after the publication of the abridged version of Dracula, the Lyceum Theatre fell into bankruptcy and was forced to close in July of 1902. After loosing his job as a theatrical manager. Bram, who had been only a part-time author, was forced to depend on the sale of Dracula, and other literary works for his livelihood. Unfortunately, his royalties did not make him a wealthy man.

A few of the main changes are worth nothing. For example, in Chapter I he leaves out the superfulous passage which contains the phrase "For the dead travel fast" ("Dem Die Todten reiten schell"), which is loosely derived from Burger's ghostly German love poem, "Lenore." In Chapter XII he omits the vignette about how Quincey Morris was attacked by a vampire bat in South America. But Bram did not make any major changes to the section dealing with the destruction of Lucy in her tomb (Chapters XV and XVI).. He must have realized that this one of the most powerful and well-written parts of the novel. Most films have retained this scene in their adaptations of Dracula. In fact it is one of the most compelling sequences in the most recent version, Francis Ford Coppola's eponymously titled "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (as if there were any other!).

Some tomes have written about the assumed reasons for the continuing popularity of Dracula, especially by those mining the rich, if highly suspect fields of pop psychology, it might seem the height of hubris for me to suggest a few more, but here goes! Bram Stoker brilliantly employed a style which approximates what the French call "la douche écossaise," meaning "the hot and cold shower" technique for arousing our senses; specifically he alternated horror and humor. And we all know that they go together; especially when we invariably hear laughter during the most horrible scenes in horror movies. In the novel, the sage Dr. Abraham van Helsing even speculates about the beneficial uses of "King Laugh," in the midst of abounding horrors.

The Novel also shows us what we secretly feel anyway, namely, that modern science cannot deal with the essential questions which gnaw at the human conscience. Questions about the meaning and purpose of life are inexorably bound up with the question of why we must die. Those of us who love life do not want to die. Is there some kind of life beyond the grave? If we love someone who has died, is there any way to bring them back? If we die when the blood flows out of us, what if we could make the blood flow back in? And what would someone who had gone through the experience of death and come alive again be like? Deep down we realize that the only way in which we can rejoin our beloved dead is to die ourselves. In fiction, however, they can return as vampires and lure us into an unholy communion in which they mix their blood with ours. In addition, if the "undead" (a word which Stoker coined to describe the vampire state) could return, they would outnumber the living. This is one reason why we are elated when the fearless vampire hunters track down Count Dracula and destroy him—at least for a while for, as we all know, evil cannot be eradicated forever. But Stoker's novel assures us that the foul thing from the grave can be halted temporarily.

In completing the reading of either version of this novel, most of us come to hope that Count Dracula and his kin will no longer walk among us but will finally rest in peace. At the same time, we realize hat we will come back sometime in the future in another incarnation which is adjusted in the changing times. For these there has yet to be another monster quite as adaptable as Count Dracula.