Dublin libraries acquire rare Dracula collection

A rare collection of books about Dracula and its author Bram Stoker will be presented to Dublin's public libraries today.

The Leslie Shepard Bram Stoker collection contains more than 200 books and materials relating to the Dublin-born writer and his most famous character.

Bram Stoker expert Leslie Shepard, who died in 2004, amassed the collection over several decades. He was a British writer and editor who produced collections of vampire stories.

His library includes first editions of Stoker's work, books about Transylvanian history and geography, and Russian, Polish and Irish translations of Dracula.

It contains the 1887 Karl Baedeker handbook for travellers in Transylvania which includes maps consulted by Bram Stoker when he wrote Dracula. The book was published in 1897.

Dr Albert Power, registrar of the Bram Stoker Society, said the collection had "an enormous research value" and was "an important and valuable bequest to the city of Dublin" .

He said Mr Shepard had led the way in getting recognition for Bram Stoker after he set up the Bram Stoker Society in 1980 and succeeded in getting a name plate put on one of Stoker's childhood homes on Dublin's Kildare Street. Bram Stoker was born in Clontarf in 1847 and moved to London when aged 31.

Dr Power said there was now a greater appreciation of Bram Stoker, particularly since a Francis Ford Coppola film version of Dracula in 1992.