The Lair of the White Worm. Брэм Стокер
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THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM
Bram Stoker
William Collins
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This eBook published by William Collins in 2015
Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Gerard Cheshire asserts his moral right as author of the Life & Times section
Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from
Collins English Dictionary
Cover by e-Digital Design. Cover image: 1911 1st edition 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
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.
Dracula
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.
Soon Dracula is stalking Harker’s fiancée Wilhelmina and her friend Lucy. When Lucy begins to fall ill her blood is drained and she appears to die. However, by night she is resurrected as a vampire, where she begins victimizing children. Professor Abraham Van Helsing recognizes that Lucy has become a vampire, so she is ritually killed. Dracula reacts by infecting Wilhelmina and controlling her mind through telepathy. Ultimately Dracula is pursued back to his castle, as the Professor knows that the only way to save Wilhelmina is to put an end to Dracula.
Stoker’s book is made real by the way it is written. It comprises various accounts narrated by different characters and includes excerpts from newspaper reports. The result is a story that has the illusion of truth. This style of writing is known as epistolary and was also used by Mary Shelley in writing Frankenstein. From an author’s point of view the technique means that a story can be told in such a way that the central characters