Background of the Study
Abraham (Bram) Stoker was born November 8, 1847 in Dublin, Ireland. His father was a civil servant and his mother was a charity worker and writer. Stoker was a sickly child and spent a lot of time in bed. Growing up his mother told him a lot of horror stories which may have influenced his later writings. In 1864 Stoker entered Trinity College Dublin. While attending college he began working as an Irish civil servant. He also worked part time as a free lance journalist and drama critic. In 1876 he met Henry Irving, a famous actor, and they soon became friends. Not long after that, Stoker met and fell in love with an aspiring actress named Florence Balcombe. In 1878 Stoker accepted a job working in London as Irving’s personal secretary. According to an announcement in the December 5, 1878 issue of The Freeman’s Journal: and Daily Commercial Advertiser Stoker and Balcombe were married on December 4, 1878 at St. Anne’s Parish Church, Dublin, by the Rev. Charles W. Benson. On December 9, Stoker and his new wife moved to England to join Irving. His first book “The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland” though written while he was still in Dublin, was published in 1879. On December 30, 1879 Stoker and his wife had their only child, a son Noel. While in England Stoker also wrote several novels and short stories. His first book of fiction, “Under the Sunset,” was published in 1881. Although best known for “Dracula”, Stoker wrote eighteen books before his death in 1912. He died of exhaustion at the age of 64.
The Jewel of Seven Stars
was Bram Stoker’s eighth novel. This novel, along with The Lair of The White Worm, is one of his most famous after Dracula. The novel is a horror story about attempt to resurrect an Egyptian queen. It was first published in the UK in 1903 by William Heinemann, London. The book itself is a 337 page hardcover with a red cloth cover stamped on the spine and front panel in blind, back and gold. In the same year, this book was also published by Heinemann as a part of their Heinemann’s Colonial Library series (No. 276). This edition is a hardcover with a decorated cloth cover [1]. The Jewel of Seven Stars was first published in the US in 1904 by Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and London. This edition is a 311 page hardcover with a dark blue cloth cover stamped on the spine and front panel in light green and silver. In the same year it was also published in the US by W. R. Caldwell & Co, New York, as a part of The International Adventure Library (Three Owls Edition) series. This edition is a 310 page hardcover with a red cloth cover stamped on the spine and front panel in blind, black and gold.
Literature Review
The Jewel of Seven Stars is relatively unknown, which is surprising — it is one of the earlier stories about the reanimation of an ancient Egyptian mummy, and it is quite a thrilling tale! It also uses state-of-the-art science of the time to bolster the story — with rather amusing results.
When Malcolm Ross arrives at the Trelawny house, he finds a scene in near chaos. Abel has been found in his room of Egyptian antiquities, lying on the floor near his safe with his wrist horribly mauled by some animal. A Doctor Winchester has already been called to tend to the patient, and Ross quickly calls a sharp police officer, Sergeant Daw, to assist in the investigation. Abel Trelawny is in a cataleptic state unfamiliar to medical science, but seems to have anticipated trouble: he has left explicit written instructions that he is not to be moved from his Egyptian room, and furthermore he is to be guarded at all times by no less than one man and one woman.
The latter directive turns out to be prophetic: the following night, even with people in the room, Abel is attacked again by an unseen force. Ross and the others realize they are guarding against a deadly and likely supernatural threat — and have no real defense against it. More troubling, Margaret Trelawny seems to gradually be falling under the influence of this same threat, as her personality shifts subtly but unmistakably.
The arrival of Eugene Corbeck, a colleague of Abel’s freshly returned from Egypt, sheds some light on the situation and raises the stakes considerably. With Corbeck’s help, Trelawny has spent years of his life seeking out the tomb of the ancient Egyptian queen and sorceress Tera, and nearly all of Tera’s funerary possessions are in Abel’s room — including the queen’s mummy. Corbeck has brought the final pieces with him, and with everything together the group plans a dangerous experiment that may prove the existence of the supernatural — or lead to their destruction.
The focus and true heroine of this novel is Tera, who, in life, was Queen of the Egypts (Upper and Lower), daughter of Antef, Monarch of the North and the South, Daughter of the Sun and Queen of the Diadems. Even in her day she was the original emancipated woman because she claimed all the privileges of Kingship and masculinity and had power to compel the gods but never gave up her femininity even to the end of this story. According to the story she lived during the Theban Dynasty which was the 11th and at her birth a great aerolite fell, from whose heart was finally extracted that Jewel of Seven Stars which she regarded as the talisman of her life. It’s description is given to be that of a rare ruby with seven stars of which each star had seven points.
Significance of Study
Set in the early twentieth century, the story opens when the first-person narrator, a barrister named Malcolm Ross, is summoned to the house of a young woman he recently met and is attracted to named Margaret Trelawny. She found her father, Abel Trelawny, unconscious on the floor of his study with seven scratches on his arm. The study is filled with Ancient Egyptian artifacts and Ross immediately notices the strong “mummy smell,” referring to the odor of bitumen and other substances the ancient Egyptians used to embalm their dead. Margaret has a letter of instructions from her father should such a strange occurrence take place. He is not to be removed from the room and a man and a woman must stand watch over him at all times. At this point, Malcolm and Margaret, along with a team consisting of Mr. Trelawny’s personal physician, Dr. Winchester, and his nurse watch over the Egyptologist. Over the coming days, strange things happen. Margaret’s cat, Silvio, tries to attack a cat mummy in the room. One night while Malcolm is on watch, he falls asleep. When he awakens, he discovers Mr. Trelawny on the floor and one of the knives in his collection has been moved. At first Silvio is suspected, but they realize the cat could not have pulled a grown man from his resting place on the study’s couch much less moved the knife. After this, Malcolm takes care to wear a respirator to avoid succumbing to the mummy smell. Malcolm also compares notes with Dr. Winchester and Police Superintendent Dolan. It begins to seem that the only person who could be responsible is none other than Margaret Trelawny, but there seems no good reason she would cause the strange occurrences.
At last, an old acquaintance of Mr. Trelawny named Eugene Corbeck arrives. He claims that he’d been tasked with searching out seven special lamps. However, soon after arriving in England, the lamps have vanished. The next day, the lamps are discovered in the Trelawny house. Corbeck gives us some backstory. It turns out that he was Mr. Trelawny’s partner in exploring Egypt. They came across a tomb of Queen Tera, in the Valley of the Sorcerers. Queen Tera had herself mummified with all her organs in tact and believed she had found a way to return to her body in the distant future. The key to the revival is, of course, the titular jewel of the seven stars, which serves as a map for the correct placement of the seven lamps. While Corbeck is telling his story, Abel Trelawny revives. To Malcolm Ross’s delight, now that we’re about two-thirds of the way through the novel, he gives his blessing for Ross to formally court Margaret. Once that’s out of the way, Mr. Trelawny, Corbeck, Ross, Margaret, and Dr. Winchester put plans in motion to see if they can bring Queen Tera back from the dead.