# Is "Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories" by Bram Stoker a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories by Bram Stoker (George Routledge & Sons, London, 1914) is identified by: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., London, 1914 (Broadway House, 68–74 Carter Lane, E.C.): octavo, original decorated red to scarlet cloth, the front panel with author, title and decoration stamped in blind and the spine panel stamped in gold and blind; pp. Posthumous UK Routledge 1914 is the true first, published two years after Stoker's death at Florence Stoker's instigation.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., London, 1914 (Broadway House, 68–74 Carter Lane, E.C.): octavo, original decorated red to scarlet cloth, the front panel with author, title and decoration stamped in blind and the spine panel stamped in gold and blind; pp. [1–8], 1–200
- Collates nine stories and opens with Florence Bram Stoker's preface, in which she describes the title story as an episode excised from Dracula for length
- The identification point that matters is the impression statement: demand carried the book through several impressions within 1914 itself, and the later ones are stated as such — Richard Dalby's Library (Dalby being the Stoker bibliographer) lists a copy explicitly labelled "Third impression", and second- and third-impression copies circulate freely — so a copy dated 1914 carrying no impression statement is the first impression, while any stated impression is not, despite the identical title-page year
- Jacketed copies are scarce; a jacket with artwork by Handforth and a price present at the flap is recorded, but by a single dealer only, so treat that jacket detail as indicative rather than established
- A cheaply made book: foxing, tanned endpapers and cocked spines are the norm
- Publisher imprint reads George Routledge & Sons, London
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Bram Stoker |
| Publisher | George Routledge & Sons, London |
| Year | 1914 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., London, 1914 (Broadway House, 68–74 Carter Lane, E.C.): octavo, original decorated red to scarlet cloth, the… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Confirmed. George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., London, 1914 (Broadway House, 68–74 Carter Lane, E.C.): octavo, original decorated red to scarlet cloth, the front panel with author, title and decoration stamped in blind and the spine panel stamped in gold and blind; pp. [1–8], 1–200. Collates nine stories and opens with Florence Bram Stoker's preface, in which she describes the title story as an episode excised from Dracula for length. The identification point that matters is the impression statement: demand carried the book through several impressions within 1914 itself, and the later ones are stated as such — Richard Dalby's Library (Dalby being the Stoker bibliographer) lists a copy explicitly labelled "Third impression", and second- and third-impression copies circulate freely — so a copy dated 1914 carrying no impression statement is the first impression, while any stated impression is not, despite the identical title-page year. Jacketed copies are scarce; a jacket with artwork by Handforth and a price present at the flap is recorded, but by a single dealer only, so treat that jacket detail as indicative rather than established. A cheaply made book: foxing, tanned endpapers and cocked spines are the norm.

## Is this the true first?
Posthumous UK Routledge 1914 is the true first, published two years after Stoker's death at Florence Stoker's instigation. The first American edition did not follow until 1937, from Hillman-Curl, Inc., New York, under the shortened title Dracula's Guest (dropping "and Other Weird Stories"), in publisher's decorated light green cloth stamped in black on front and spine panels, top edge stained, fore-edge untrimmed, approx. 284 pp. Both are collected — the Routledge 1914 as the true first, the Hillman-Curl 1937 as a scarce American first — but the 1937 reprints a 1914 text and must never be described as a first edition without the "American" qualifier.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No contemporary book-club edition documented. The reprint field is dense: multiple stated impressions appeared within 1914 (second, third, and later — a ninth impression is recorded), all dated from the same first-edition setting and outwardly near-identical in size and binding, and these are the copies most often mis-offered as firsts precisely because the title-page year is unchanged. Later Routledge printings, and the many modern anthology reprints that carry only the single story "Dracula's Guest" rather than the nine-story collection, are separate traps.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories* by Bram Stoker a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/draculas-guest-and-other-weird-stories
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.