The Mammoth Book of Dracula - [Anthology] Edited By Stephen Jones

DO WE REALLY need another collection of vampire stories? That is the question I had to ask myself before compiling this present volume. In the past few years, the bookshelves have been groaning under the weight of new vampire fiction. There have been countless novels, collections and anthologies published about every conceivable permutation of the undead and, truth to tell, most of it has been quickly forgettable. However, thanks to the success of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books and films, along with the TV series True Blood (based on the novels by Charlaine Harris), vampires have never been so popular. These days the undead have become a sub-genre in themselves. As my colleague Kim Newman has cleverly remarked elsewhere, vampire fiction has become the Star Trek of horror.

When my publisher and I began discussing a follow-up volume to our very successful 1992 anthology, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, we agreed that we didn’t want to produce just a second collection of stories. So after careful deliberation, I decided that it might be interesting to see if I could compile a loosely-constructed, “fictionalized history” of the most memorable vampire of them all -Count Dracula. You hold the result in your hands.

Of all the fictional vampires ever created, Dracula continues to endure more than a century after he was created by Bram (Abraham) Stoker. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, Stoker was a sickly child until he discovered books at around school age. A qualified barrister, his first love was always the theatre, and while working as a civil servant he was introduced to the greatest actor-producer of his time, Henry Irving. The two became friends, and in December 1878 Stoker assumed the acting managership of Irving’s Royal Lyceum Theatre in London, much to the dismay of his family. The same year Stoker married Oscar Wilde’s ex-sweetheart, the Irish-born Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe (whom George du Maurier, author of Trilby, described as one of the three most beautiful women he had ever seen).

Although he had written the occasional short story, it was during this period that Stoker really began to concentrate on his fiction. Possibly inspired by J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire novella, ‘Carmilla’ (1871), he began working on a novel manuscript entitled The Un-Dead. It was finally published in an edition of 3,000 copies as Dracula in June 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The book received mixed reviews (“appalling in its gloomy fascination”) and although it sold steadily, Stoker never earned much money from it. Unfortunately, Stoker’s subsequent novels—The Mystery of the Sea, The Jewel of the Seven Stars, The Lady of the Shroud and The Lair of the White Worm—failed to achieve even comparable success.

The author loosely based his character on the mid-fifteenth century Wallachian prince, Vlad Tepes IV, known as Vlad the Impaler because of his predilection for impaling live victims on sharpened wooden stakes while he dined. For the Count’s physical form, Stoker took his hero and employer Henry Irving as his inspiration.

Following Irving’s death in 1905, Stoker suffered a stroke which left him weakened and partially sighted for the rest of his life. Also suffering from a degenerative kidney disease, possibly complicated by tertiary syphilis, Bram Stoker died on April 20th, 1912, the same week that the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic.

The following year, Florence Stoker offered her husband’s working notes for Dracula at auction. They were sold for little more than two pounds. In 1914 she published Dracula’s Guest, a collection of her husband’s short stories, including the self-contained chapter of the title, which was originally omitted from Stoker’s novel because of length.

Since its author’s death, Dracula has gone on to influence countless imitators and formed the basis of a worldwide entertainment industry created around the character.

Dracula has been immortalized in plays, movies and on television by Max Schreck, Raymond Huntley, Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Christopher Lee, Jack Palance, Louis Jourdan, Frank Langella, Gary Oldman and numerous other, less memorable, actors. In fiction he has met everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Batman. He has appeared in cartoons and comic books, and his image has been used to sell everything from jigsaw puzzles to breakfast cereals. Like Mickey Mouse, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, Dracula has become a twenty-first century icon. He is also very big business.

In his excellent 1990 study Hollywood Gothic, author David Skal has pointed out that the “appeal of Dracula is decidedly ambiguous. Most monsters take and trample. Dracula alone seduces, courting before he kills. Unlike other monsters, he is not always recognizable as such. Dracula looks too much like one of us.” In the literature of the vampire, the monster could be someone we know or, even worse, ourselves.

As with my other Mammoth volumes, I have collected together several reprints which are particular favourites of mine, plus original stories by established writers and a few newer names. I believe that only in this way can the horror genre, particularly the anthology, hope to survive and grow.

I trust you will enjoy this volume as it asks how the King of the Vampires would adapt to the social and technological changes that continue to shape the second decade of the twenty-first century. Is it possible that the Count’s undead condition could be cured by modern medicine? How would the mythology perpetuated by literature and movies have affected the existence of a real bloodsucker? And what if Dracula found himself ruler of a world controlled by vampires? Or perhaps poverty, crime, political instability and ecological disaster will result in the Count’s final destruction ... ?

Of course you can dip in and out of the book if you prefer—as the reader that is your prerogative. However, I have designed this volume to be read from the beginning through to the end, thereby creating a loose historical chronicle of Count Dracula, stretching from the Victorian era through to the last millennium and beyond. As an added bonus, I have also included the long-lost Prologue to a theatrical version of Dracula by the Count’s original creator, Bram Stoker, presented here for the very first time since its only performance in 1897.

So, I bid you welcome to this special celebration of the World’s Greatest Vampire. Enter freely and of your own will. Come freely, go safely, and leave some of the happiness you bring! But most of all, have fun ...

Stephen Jones

London, England

<<CONTENTS>>

~ * ~