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.
