Olshevri Baron

Baron Olshervi is the pseudonym of a Russian author who wrote the novel Vampires, which in terms of plot serves as a prehistory to Bram Stoker’s classic Count Dracula. Nothing is known for certain about the author, but there are three versions of who hid behind the pseudonym “Baron Olshervi,” or, as titles were customarily written at the time, “B. Olshervi.”

Version 1.

A note in Knizhnoe Obozrenie in 1993 stated that the author of the novel was a woman whose first name is not given and whose surname was Molchanova-Khomze. Although the epilogue to Vampires contains a hint about its author, the initials are given as “E. L. Kh.” Having been a wealthy lady, related to rich gold miners, and having spent a great deal of time in Europe, she was a very well-educated person and managed to provide her children with an excellent education. The novels she created under the influence of Stoker’s books about Count Dracula were a kind of ladies’ handiwork, an amusement both for herself and for her children. The author’s pseudonym “B. Olshervi” (in the original, supposedly published in Leipzig in 1908–1912) was read as “more lies,” that is, it hinted at the unserious nature of the author’s intentions. The epilogue to the novel — “If you don’t like it, don’t listen, but don’t stop me from telling lies” — clearly alluded to this circumstance.

Version 2.

In an article by L. I. Zdanovich, “The Unknown Dracula,” which preceded the novel published in the collection Family of Vampires, the suggestion is made that the author may have been Nina Sandrova (the pseudonym of Nadezhda Yakovlevna Goldberg). She was a translator who worked for Blue Journal, in whose supplements Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1912–13.