Potter & Potter Auctions to Hold Autumn Chills: Fine Horror and Mystery Literature Sale on Nov. 12

Top lots include a first edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a signed Clark Ashton Smith collection, and a rare Exorcist advance poster

Chicago, IL — November 2026 — Potter & Potter Auctions will present its first dedicated horror and mystery literature event, Autumn Chills: Fine Horror and Mystery Literature, on Thursday, November 12, 2026, live at the gallery at 5001 W. Belmont Avenue in Chicago. The 533-lot sale will also be live-streamed at potterauctions.com. Offerings span rare first editions, pulps and zines, manuscripts, vintage posters, and ephemera by celebrated authors and artists in the horror and mystery genres.

Leading the sale is Lot 1, a first edition, first printing of Bram Stoker’s (1847-1912) Dracula, estimated at $30,000-$50,000. Published in 1897 in Westminster by Archibald Constable and Company, the volume retains its publisher’s full canary yellow cloth with boards and spine ruled and lettered in red, and is housed in a modern yellow cloth clamshell case. It is one of an estimated 3,000 copies printed of the first printing. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of Dracula: “[it is] the very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years. It is really wonderful how with so much exciting interest over so long a book there is never an anticlimax.”

Lot 10, the first English edition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s (1859-1930) The White Company, is estimated at $4,000-$6,000. This three-volume set was published in 1891 in London by Smith, Elder & Co. One of 750 copies, the set includes a laid-in autograph postcard signed by Doyle on his Crowborough stationery, written in pencil to an unstated bookseller and signed “A Conan Doyle.” Doyle once remarked of the novel: “Of my novels, The White Company gave me most pleasure. I was young and full of the first joy of life and action, and I think I got some of it into my pages.”

Lot 6, a first edition, first printing of E.F. Benson’s (1867-1940) The Room in the Tower and Other Stories, is estimated at $1,000-$2,000. Published in London by Mills & Boon, Limited in 1912, this copy includes a laid-in autograph note signed by Benson, addressed “Dear Mr. Coller” and signed “E Benson,” on the author’s own note stationery. The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural calls it “by far the best of his four books of ghost stories” and notes its seventeen tales are “each almost too well-rounded to fault.”

Lot 339, Clark Ashton Smith’s (1893-1961) Out of Space and Time, is estimated at $2,500-$3,500. This signed first edition of Smith’s first Arkham House collection was published in Sauk City, WI in 1942, retaining its original unclipped dust jacket. Only the third publication from Arkham House and the first major collection of Smith’s work, it is considered a scarce and seminal volume in American weird fiction, with only 1,054 copies printed.

Also featured is Lot 11, designer Dan Perri’s (b. 1945) exceedingly rare The Exorcist American Advance Poster, estimated at $4,000-$6,000. This 31-1/4 x 22-1/4-inch orange and black half-sheet was printed in Hollywood, CA by Warner Brothers in 1973. It depicts the silhouette of Father Merrin facing the demon Pazuzu. According to Potter’s experts, only a few of these have ever been offered at auction.

Chad Reingold, Director of Rare Books, said of the sale: “We are so excited to present our first dedicated Horror and Mystery literature sale. Not only are we offering a beautiful first edition, first printing of Dracula (which is a dream come true), but we are also offering the first printed appearance of Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the first mystery and detective story. This is a wonderful way to close out our book sales for 2026!”

For catalogues and bidding information, visit Potter & Potter Auctions.