Dracula by Bram Stoker (Modern Library)
STOKER, Bram. Dracula. New York: Random House, n.d. [c. 1951]. Modern Library, 31.
Early 1950s reprint of the Modern Library Dracula with dust jacket by Edward McKnight Kauffer (first issued with this dust jacket in 1941). This copy has 358 Modern Library titles to the jacket verso, and a price of $1.25 to front flap. The blurb on the front flap is the same as in the original 1932 Modern Library issue (an additional sentence at the end of the blurb was added in 1958).
(Gordon B. Neavill’s Bibliography of the Modern Library, 1925-1959)
Mention of any thriller immediately brings a comparison to Dracula, the model toward which writers of the macabre strive. As a novel it has provided chills and nightmares for countless readers; on the stage and as a cinema it has aroused terror in the hearts of vast audiences. The monstrous figure of Dracula, half human, half bat, the “human vampire,” is as original and forbidding a creature as the literature of horror has ever created. His sinister deeds grip you with an icy fear and hold you spellbound. (from the blurb on the dust jacket)
ix, 418. 8vo, original cloth. Top corner slightly creased to a couple of pages. The original dust jacket with slight wear to top of spine, and a light stain to front fold. A very good copy in very good dust jacket. Kauffer's strikingly spooky jacket illustration depicts Dracula's face with right forehead and cheekbone in green, eyes in deep purple, and three white fangs protruding from his mouth.
Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954) was an American artist, and one of Britain’s most influential poster artists and graphic designers of his era.