Copyright

      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

       History of Collins

      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.

      Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed, and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

      Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly “Victorian” in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

      In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of “books for the millions” was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel, and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

      HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible, and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

       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.

       Dracula

      When Stoker published his definitive story of Count Dracula the vampire, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had already been in print for 69 years and had enjoyed great success. It told a similarly satanic story of a Victor Frankenstein who fabricated a corpse, brought it to life using electricity and suffered the consequences of interfering with nature. Clearly the Victorian public had a taste for literature that served to chill and thrill, so Dracula had an interested and ready readership.

      In the story of Dracula, an English businessman, named Jonathan Harker, visits Count Dracula in his Eastern European castle to organize his estate. He soon finds himself trapped by Dracula and is subjected to all manner of frightening and supernatural horrors, however he manages to escape, only to be followed back to England. Dracula arrives in the form of a satanic beast, who has fed on the blood of sailors whilst crossing from the continent. The crewless ship is wrecked and rescuers find only the captain’s account of supernatural events onboard his ship. There is also a cargo of Transylvanian soil, which Dracula has brought with him as a home from home.

      Soon Dracula is stalking Harker’s fiancée Wilhelmina and her friend Lucy. When Lucy begins to fall ill her blood is drained and she appears to die. However, by night she is resurrected as a vampire, where she begins victimizing children. Professor Abraham Van Helsing recognizes that Lucy has become a vampire, so she is ritually killed. Dracula reacts by infecting Wilhelmina and controlling her mind through telepathy. Ultimately Dracula is pursued back to his castle, as the Professor knows that the only way to save Wilhelmina is to put an end to Dracula.

      Stoker’s book is made real by the way it is written. It comprises various accounts narrated by different characters and includes excerpts from newspaper reports. The result is a story that has the illusion of truth. This style of writing is known as epistolary and was also used by Mary Shelley in writing Frankenstein. From an author’s point of view the technique means that a story can be told in such a way that the central characters