653. Stoker (Bram) "Dracula," "first edition, first issue, inscribed from the author to Mrs W.S. Gilbert on front fly-leaf, minor spotting to endpapers, otherwise internally fine, original canary-yellow cloth with lettering and single-roll borders & rules in red, some very light surface marking, but overall an excellent, clean & sharp copy, housed in custom-made black buckram drop-back box, felt-lined, lettered in gilt, 8vo, Archibald Constable, 1897."
est. £7500 – £10000
"A wonderful, completely unsophisticated, copy of the scarce first issue published in May 1897, with no advertisements as issued and printed on slightly thicker stock.
The contemporary inscription reads “To Mrs. W.S. Glibert with Bram Stoker’s very warm regards, 12/7/97”. Mrs W.S. Gilbert who was the wife of William Schwenck Gilbert, of Gilbert & Sullivan fame, was a friend of Stoker. Some mild controversy was attached at the time to the friendship that existed between Gilbert and Stoker’s young wife, Florence, as they often socialised together and the former was seen by some as something of a “decadent”."