The Stoker Canon

ELT 38: 1 1995 aesthetic romance is its opposite Ui which form prevails over content. The ideal response of the reader of aesthetic romance is that of awestruck wonder. The reader discovers there is a profound mystery behind human existence, but cannot penetrate the facade the author has built to conceal it. By telling the reader there is a mystery to be uncovered, but not suggesting the means by which the secrets may be revealed the author is not playing fair. The third type of romance, the ethical romance, derives more directly from Hawthorne. To the writer of ethical romance there is a complex moral dimension hidden behind the everyday human experience. The reader may actually be invited to participate Ui the outcome of the story itself. In this way there is a breakdown of the traditional boundary between reader and story and the text becomes a kind of "theater Ui the round." There are such fascinating elements Ui this study that it is tempting to read more into it than the author intends, much as the readers of Wells and Stevenson and Chesterton may have read more into their works than they ever intended. But this is a study of imagination as used Ui fiction and we may be excused for letting our imaginations take flight, as long as we are led back to the original texts under discussion to test the thesis of the critic. It is a book that wül repay rereading. The notes are meticulous, useful (leading the reader to further sources for exploration) and the index is exemplary. J. Randolph Cox Relvaag Memorial Library, Saint Olaf College The Stoker Canon Carol A. Senf, ed. The Critical Response to Bram Stoker. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993. 216 pp. $50.00 THE USUAL EPITHET for Bram Stoker is "the author of DracuL·." In The Critical Response to Bram Stoker, however, Carol Senf aims to represent the reception of the broad range of Stoker's literary production by his contemporaries and by recent scholarly critics. Somehow , despite his full-tune employment as business manager for the highly successful actor Henry Irving and his Lyceum Theatre company in London from 1878 until Irving's death Ui 1905, Stoker found tune to publish not only the horrific and famous DracuL· (1897) but also ten other novels of romance, adventure, and occasionally horror; two books of short stories (a book of fairy tales, Under the Sunset, Ui 1881 and a 102 BOOK REVIEWS collection about a theatrical troupe, Snowbound, in 1908); Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving Ui 1906; a coUection of nonfictional studies entitled Famous Impostors Ui 1910; a civü-service manual which became a classic m its own way, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in IreL·nd (1879); and a multitude of essays, lectures, short stories, and theatrical reviews and puffery. Stoker wrote and published fairly steadUy from the 1870s onwards, and from the tune of Irving's death to Stoker's own death Ui 1912, writing seems to have been his main source of income. His final book, DracuWs Guest and Other Weird Stories, was put together and published by his widow in 1914. The body of The Critical Response to Bram Stoker is divided into thirteen sections, one each for Under the Sunset, Personal Reminiscences , Famous Impostors, and ten of the eleven novels, including DracuL·. Senf explains Ui her Introduction that she aims to "provide readers with easy access to criticism of Stoker's work... ; to put DracuL· into the context of Stoker's other works, and to interest both readers and scholars in Stoker's other works." The focus of Senfs book makes it an exceptionally important contribution to scholarly study of Stoker's work at the present tune. The book is above aU a call to action. As The Critical Response clearly shows, m the period between Stoker's era and the past thirty years or so there was virtually no close, critical discussion of his work by literary scholars. Senf prints forty-five reviews or comments from Stoker's era, fourteen scholarly commentaries from 1972-1990, and only one item—a brief comment from H. P. Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror (1939)—from the...