8vo. (Minor spotting to preliminary leaves.) Original yellow cloth lettered in red (rubbing to extremities, darkening to spine with some leaning, spotting to text block edges, hinges touched up). Provenance: Helena Scott (ownership inscription dated July 1897); A.C. Dunn (ownership inscription); Davies & Son (booksellers' ticket).

"The world's most influential and enduring supernatural novel of vampirism, starring the most celebrated and evocative character in macabre literature" (Dalby).

FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE without the publisher's advertisements at the end as seen in the earliest presentation and review copies issued in May and June 1897, with the last page of text numbered 390 followed by an integral blank leaf. Prior to beginning work on Dracula, Bram Stoker compiled over a hundred pages of notes relating to vampiric folklore, the earliest of which is dated 8 May 1890 and comprises a short outline of what would become the novel's first chapter. The story took a further two years to flesh out before Stoker began serious work on it during his summer holidays in Cruden Bay, Scotland, from 1893 to 1896. Though well-reviewed, Dracula was not an immediate success and earned its author next to nothing in royalties, despite never having gone out of print. It has since become a cornerstone of the modern horror fiction genre and is considered the template for most future depictions of the vampire in popular fiction.

It's binding, widely regarded as the most celebrated and instantly recognizable book bindings of the Victorian era, exemplifies "the use of a significant cover in the form of a lurid yellow cloth binding with lettering in red. To modern readers, this livery, created by an anonymous designer, is merely bold and eye-catching. For the original audience, however, it was freighted with symbolism and association. The livid red anticipates the emphasis on blood and bloodiness, but more important is the use of the colour yellow...it projected the notion of depravity by linking the text to The Yellow Book, the celebrated periodical published by John Lane in the 1890s as the organ of the Decadents. In its association... yellow...'became the colour of the hour' and was 'associated with all that was bizarre and queer in art and life, with all that was outrageously modern'" (Cooke, Simon. "Visualising Dracula." In: The Book Collector, Summer 2021, pp.234-237). Barron, Horror 3-186; Bleiler, Supernatural 1546; Dalby, 10(a); Wolff 6581.