The Lair of the White Worm

In 1860, Adam Salton receives an unexpected letter at his club in Sydney. An elderly grand-uncle he has never met, Richard Salton, summons him to the English estate of Lesser Hill. Nearing eighty and seeking an heir, the older man offers Adam a bank draft and the promise of a permanent home.

Adam accepts the invitation, anticipating a quiet life as a country gentleman. Instead, he arrives in a district overshadowed by a grim local legend. The surrounding lands were once terrorized by a massive, primordial serpent known as the White Worm. But the beast is not confined to history. It still waits in the deep cavities beneath the English countryside, and it is beginning to wake.

Published in 1911, Bram Stoker’s final novel bridges the conventions of Victorian gothic horror and the weird fiction of the Edwardian era. Rooted in regional folklore, the book remains a fixture of early twentieth-century supernatural fantasy and the source material for Ken Russell’s 1988 film adaptation.