The Lair of the White Worm

The Lair of the White Worm
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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.‘But it was not only the heart-rending sound that almost paralysed poor Mimi with terror. What she saw was sufficient to fill her with evil dreams for the remainder of her life…’At the estate of Castra Regis in Derbyshire, mystery lurks in the woods, a place where snakes dwell and murderous deeds take place in the darkness. The behaviour of local residents Arabella March and Edgar Caswall further arouse the suspicions of Adam Salton, recently arrived at the invite of his great-uncle. Determined to quell the supernatural malevolence in his midst, Adam embarks on a quest to uncover evil and restore harmony.The final novel from the author of ‘Dracula’, ‘The Lair of the White Worm’ is a lesser-known but well-loved classic from the master of gothic horror.

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THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM

Bram Stoker


William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com

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 1>st edition illustration by Pamela Colman Smith, courtesy Wikicommons

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008110505

Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008110512

Version: 2014-12-18

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

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Life & Times

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.



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