# Is "The Lair of the White Worm" by Bram Stoker a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker (William Rider & Son, London, 1911) is identified by: William Rider and Son, Limited, London, 1911: octavo (approx. UK Rider 1911 is the true first and the only first — there was no simultaneous or near-simultaneous American edition.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- William Rider and Son, Limited, London, 1911: octavo (approx
- 19 x 13 cm), original bright red cloth, the front panel stamped in blind and the spine panel stamped in gold and blind, with six inserted colour plates by Pamela Colman Smith (designer of the Rider–Waite tarot), the frontispiece with tissue guard; pp. viii, 324, followed by advertisement leaves and a publisher's catalogue
- The decisive point is textual completeness: the 1911 first prints the full 40-chapter text. bramstoker.org, Wikipedia and multiple dealers (Lycanthia Books, Richard Dalby's Library) agree independently on the red cloth, the blind-and-gilt stamping, the six Colman Smith plates and the 324-page collation
- Later editions almost universally lack the plates, so a plate-less copy is a reprint — but plates are also commonly extracted from genuine firsts, so look for stubs rather than assuming
- One dealer observes that bulkier copies may represent an earlier part of the print run; that is an impression, not an established point, and should not be relied on
- Publisher imprint reads William Rider & Son, London
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Bram Stoker |
| Publisher | William Rider & Son, London |
| Year | 1911 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | William Rider and Son, Limited, London, 1911: octavo (approx |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Confirmed. William Rider and Son, Limited, London, 1911: octavo (approx. 19 x 13 cm), original bright red cloth, the front panel stamped in blind and the spine panel stamped in gold and blind, with six inserted colour plates by Pamela Colman Smith (designer of the Rider–Waite tarot), the frontispiece with tissue guard; pp. viii, 324, followed by advertisement leaves and a publisher's catalogue. The decisive point is textual completeness: the 1911 first prints the full 40-chapter text. bramstoker.org, Wikipedia and multiple dealers (Lycanthia Books, Richard Dalby's Library) agree independently on the red cloth, the blind-and-gilt stamping, the six Colman Smith plates and the 324-page collation. Later editions almost universally lack the plates, so a plate-less copy is a reprint — but plates are also commonly extracted from genuine firsts, so look for stubs rather than assuming. One dealer observes that bulkier copies may represent an earlier part of the print run; that is an impression, not an established point, and should not be relied on.

## Is this the true first?
UK Rider 1911 is the true first and the only first — there was no simultaneous or near-simultaneous American edition. The novel was not published in the United States until 1966, when Paperback Library (New York) issued it in its Gothic series retitled The Garden of Evil, a mass-market paperback with cover art by Victor Kalin. That is the first American appearance, but it is a paperback reprint of a 55-year-old text and not a first edition in any collecting sense. Only the Rider 1911 is collected as the first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No contemporary book-club edition documented. The governing trap is the 1925 W. Foulsham & Co. (London) issue, in purple cloth stamped gilt, pp. 190 plus advertisements: it is an abridged and partly rewritten text, cut from 40 chapters to 28 — the final eleven chapters compressed into five, producing the abrupt ending critics complain of — by an unidentified hand, and it drops the plates. Because the Foulsham abridgment remained the standard UK text until the full 1911 text was reprinted in 1986, most twentieth-century reprints descend from it rather than from the first; the 1966 Paperback Library Garden of Evil is a further retitled reprint in that line.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Lair of the White Worm* by Bram Stoker a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-lair-of-the-white-worm
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.