Audiobook · read by volunteers
Lair of the White Worm
Bram Stoker (1847–1912)
Read by Betsie Bush · 28 chapters · 5 h 48
About the book
Adam Salton, a young Australian, is invited to England by his great-uncle, who has a house in the English countryside. He arrives to find a landscape thick with legend, an old mansion with an uneasy reputation, and neighbours whose behaviour is hard to read. Local tradition speaks of a monstrous creature that once haunted the district, and strange events begin to suggest that the old stories may not be entirely dead. With a mix of curiosity, courage and growing alarm, Adam and his friends set out to understand what is happening. Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, here offers a late and lurid tale of folklore, mesmerism and menace, full of atmosphere and with a taste for the extravagant. It is a fine choice for a dark evening.
Introduction
Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was an Irish writer and theatre manager, best known as the author of Dracula, which appeared in 1897. The Lair of the White Worm, also published under the title The Garden of Evil, was his last novel of note and came out in 1911, the year before his death.
The book draws on English folklore of dragons and giant serpents, and combines it with the Victorian and Edwardian taste for the supernatural, the exotic and the sensational. Its setting is the English Midlands, with ancient history lying just under the surface of modern country life. Stoker lingers over atmosphere, local colour and a gathering sense of threat, and he surrounds his hero with a lively group of allies and opponents.
Critical opinion of the novel has been divided. Some readers find it uneven or overheated, while others enjoy its frankly fantastical imagination and its dreamlike strangeness. It was later adapted for the cinema, and it has acquired a following among enthusiasts of Gothic and horror fiction.
This LibriVox recording is read by a volunteer. It has twenty-eight chapters and lasts a little under six hours. It will suit those who like their horror old-fashioned, with ruined houses, whispered legends and a touch of the absurd, and who want to see what the author of Dracula did with the same love of the macabre. Listeners should be ready for a story that does not always take itself seriously and that moves quickly from one strange scene to the next. If you enjoy Gothic tales with a regional flavour, this one offers hours of unsettling atmosphere and good-humoured excess.
Public domain
Bram Stoker died in 1912: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text