The Covers of Frankenstein : The Bride Novelized

In a highly stylized, color-drenched illustration — artist unfortunately unidentified — the Monster and his Betrothed hold hands on the cover of the Bride of Frankenstein novelization from 1936. Coincidentally, no doubt, the Bride’s hair is red, as was Elsa Lanchester’s.

Michael Egremont was the one-time-only pen name of Michael Harrison (born Maurice Desmond Rohan, 1907-1991), then in the early stages of a long and distinguished writing career. Harrison served with British Intelligence during World War II and went on to a wide variety jobs, including stints as a journalist, an editor, an advertising director, a market research executive and an industrial consultant. In the Fifties, he established himself as a major authority on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, notably with the essential In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes (1958). Harrison also wrote seven new Holmes novels, as well as new adventures of Poe’s consulting detective, Auguste Dupin.

The Bride novelization was originally published as a Queensway Edition of The Readers Library Publishing Company of London on January First, 1936. The book today is scarce, with a high quality copy going for close to a thousand dollars. Add the very rare dust jacket seen here and the book more than triples in value.

An American edition was published in 1976 by the specialty house, Bookfinger. Signing a copy, Harrison once referred to his early film novel as a “very odd literary curiosity”.

Another Bride of Frankenstein novelization, this one by Ramsey Campbell writing as “Carl Dreadstone”, was published in 1977 as part of The Universal Horror Library from Berkley Medallion.