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Stoker, Bram.
The Jewel of Seven Stars.
Publisher: William Heinemann, London;
Date of Publication: 1903
Stock Code: 11941
First Edition. Octavo, pp. vii, [1], 337, [1]. Publishers’ scarlet cloth with gilt titles to spine and black to upper board, scarab motif blocked in blind to upper board with stars picked out in gilt, and to lower board in blind. Cover cloth surface soiled and lightly rippled, more so to spine cloth. Slight wear to corners, some browning to text-block edges and endpapers. A solid copy of a book usually found in poor condition. The British First Edition, published a year before the American First and much rarer. Stoker’s best known Gothic horror novel after “Dracula” featuring an ancient Egyptian Queen Tera whose mummy is brought back to England to be resurrected from the dead. The novels themes exhibit the anxieties of the fin de siècle period including imperialistic decline and the rise of the ‘New Women’. The novel was published the same year as Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Kings and Stoker imbues Queen Tera and the principle female protagonist in the novel, Margaret Trelawny, with queenly characteristics and they literally and figuratively transform into and take on the dominant roles of the male characters. Stoker undertook considerable research for the novel, he was friends with Sir Francis Burton and both Flinders Petrie and Wallace Budge are referenced and he goes to great pains to accurately describe Egyptian artefacts and archaeology. The best example of ‘Egyptian Gothic’ the novel draws heavily on supernatural themes, the Victorian detective story, and the late Victorian fear of female empowerment and fascination with all thing Egyptian. Memorably filmed as ‘Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb’. Later editions of the novel rework the ambiguous and grisly ending.




£850.00