For sale at Bayliss Rare Books next week

Sourced and sold recently to a client via Bayliss Rare Books

A truly remarkable and highly collectible item, this fine, typed, signed letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to K. Jackson, dated 29th January 1968, offers a fascinating insight into the origins of one of The Lord of the Rings' most iconic names—Bag-End. Responding to a request to name a house "Bag-End," Tolkien reveals its source: the local name of a house in Worcestershire where his Aunt Jane lived. He humorously notes that "it is impossible to patent mere names," and recounts how the name came from an old, tumbledown manor at the end of an untidy lane.

Live online at https://www.baylissbooks.co.uk/products/origin-of-frodo-bilbo-s-house-name-bag-end-revealed-letter-29th-january-1968-original-tolkien-letter

I’m delighted to offer something truly remarkable from Bayliss Rare Books: an original letter written by Bram Stoker just weeks after Dracula was published.

It’s short, sharp, and brilliant—and crucially, it names Dracula directly. Only a handful of Stoker letters do, and this is by far the most informal and revealing of them all.

Here’s what he writes:

“I send you Dracula & have honoured myself by writing your name in it. How is enclosed for high? Lord forgive me. I am quite shameless.”
—Bram Stoker, 7 July 1897

You don’t usually get this kind of personality from Stoker. Most of his Dracula letters—when they survive—are stiffly formal. This one’s different: charming, self-deprecating, and full of human energy. You can almost feel his uncertainty about the book, his wry humour about its excesses, and his pride in sending it out into the world.

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. 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.

The timing is extraordinary too. It’s dated July 7th, 1897—just weeks after the book’s release on May 26th—making it one of the earliest surviving mentions of Dracula in Stoker’s hand.

Letters like this are almost never seen on the market. The few that do mention Dracula are usually locked in institutions—and none have quite this personality. 

It’s now available for sale at Bayliss Rare Books, with price upon request. More details and images can be supplied. I suspect it won’t hang around for long.

The opportunity to own a complete Gutenberg Bible is beyond legendary—no full copies have surfaced since 1987, and all known examples reside in institutions. For collectors, these individual leaves (termed Noble Fragments by the rare book dealer Gabriel Wells in the 1920s) are the closest one can come to owning the first printed Western book. This is, without question, one of the rarest items I have ever handled—a cornerstone for any truly serious collection.

Printed between 1450 and 1455, the Gutenberg Bible marked the dawn of the printed book and the early modern era, with an impact comparable to the invention of the internet or the moon landing. Within decades of its printing, millions of books were circulating—a revolution sparked by this very work. Only 49 complete copies are known to exist, all held by institutions.

In the 1920s, Gabriel Wells acquired an incomplete copy and made the controversial decision to separate its leaves, selling them individually with a bibliographical essay by A. Edward Newton under the title A Noble Fragment. Of the 568 leaves originally dispersed, only 466 have been located. This is one of them—and the finest example to appear on the market.

Learn more at www.baylissbooks.co.uk