The story
Dracula by Bram Stoker was published in London by Archibald Constable on 26 May 1897. It is told in diaries, letters, telegrams and newspaper clippings. The young solicitor Jonathan Harker visits a castle in Transylvania and discovers that his client, Count Dracula, is a vampire. Dracula travels by ship to England, landing at Whitby, and preys on Lucy Westenra and then Harker's fiancee Mina. Professor Abraham Van Helsing and a group of friends hunt him down and pursue him back to Transylvania.
Stoker (1847 to 1912) was an Irish writer who managed Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London, and he spent seven years researching the book. He drew on the Gothic fiction of Frankenstein and on earlier vampire tales such as John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819) and Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872). It also draws on Victorian fears about disease, foreigners, sexuality and the limits of science, and its heroes use modern tools such as telegrams, typewriters and phonograph recordings against an ancient evil.
The first reviews were mixed and sales were modest in Stoker's lifetime. Its fame came with the stage and film. F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) was an unauthorized version, and Stoker's widow Florence sued, winning a ruling for the destruction of the prints. Bela Lugosi starred in the 1931 film, and the vampire has been a fixture of popular culture ever since.
Why it mattered
- The novel set the modern image of the vampire, the aristocratic, charming predator, for film, television and fiction.
- Its use of documents and modern technology influenced later horror fiction built on diaries and records.
- It supplied a wealth of Victorian anxieties for critics studying fear of foreigners, disease and sexuality.
Sources
- Bram Stoker Britannica
- Dracula Library of Congress
Community notes
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