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ABOUT THE BOOK
Jonathan Harker is an ambitious young lawyer, sent by his employer on an assignment to a client in Transylvania. He is welcomed by the gracious, aristocratic Count but soon finds himself imprisoned by his mysterious host and menaced by a predatory coterie of women. As the shadows close in he begins to realise that the Count does not intend for him to return home…
Back in England his fiancée Mina Murray and her friend Lucy Westenra are menaced by a malevolent, debilitating force which seems intent on causing suffering and destruction. Can the devil really have arrived on England’s shores? And what is it that he hungers for so desperately?
Slowly the patchwork narrative of diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings begins to reveal a terrifying answer, and Mina, Lucy and their friends must band together to save themselves, if they can.
‘An exercise in masculine anxiety and nationalist paranoia,
Stoker’s novel is filled with scenes which are staggeringly lurid and perverse’
Sarah Waters
 ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Abraham “Bram” Stoker was born in a suburb of Dublin on 8th November 1847, the third of seven children. His parents were Abraham Stoker and the feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley. Stoker was a delicate child and said of himself, "In my babyhood I used, I understand, to be often at the point of death. Certainly till I was about seven years old I never knew what it was to stand upright. I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years."
As he grew he made a complete recovery and eventually went up to Trinity College, Dublin in 1864, where in addition to his studies he excelled as an outstanding athlete. He graduated in 1870, but maintained ties with the college, and later became friendly with the Wilde family when Oscar Wilde entered the college in 1871.
After university Stoker worked as a civil servant at Dublin Castle, combining his duties with writing in his spare time. He wrote his first book, Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, and worked for a time as drama critic for the Dublin Evening Mail. His review of Hamlet came to the attention of the actor Henry Irving, who arranged a meeting. They became close friends, and eventually in 1878 Irving asked Stoker to become his manager.
In December of the same year Stoker married the famous belle Florence Balcombe (whose previous admirers included Oscar Wilde). The couple moved to London, where Stoker took up a position as business manager of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre and Florence gave birth to their only child, a son, born 31st December 1879. They named him Irving Noel for as a tribute to Henry Irving.
Stoker was to work for Irving for almost thirty years, but always found time to write alongside his day job, supplementing his income by producing short stories, novels and supernatural thrillers, as well as a biography Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (published in 1906, the year after the actor’s death). His association with Irving gave him access to London society, but the relationship was complex. According the biographer Barbara Belford, "Stoker indentured himself to Irving in the same way as Renfield bound himself to Dracula." It is also said that Stoker’s son, originally christened Irving Noel but always known as Noel, dropped the use of his first name out of exasperation and resentment of his father’s employer.
Bram Stoker died on 20th April 1912, and was cremated. His ashes are interred at Golders Green Crematorium, in the same urn as those of his son Noel.
Background to the novel
Stoker is thought to have begun research for a vampire novel as early as 1890, and there are many rumours surrounding the origins of the tale. Stoker’s son Noel apparently claimed that the novel originated in a nightmare his father had had after eating too much dressed crab. Others have said that a visit to Slains Castle at Cruden Bay was the inspiration for the story and that Stoker began writing the novel in Cruden Bay. Others point to the figure of Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler as the inspiration for Count Dracula. However all these versions of events have been disputed by critics, and appropriately for a horror novel the true inspirations for the Count seem shrouded in mystery.
Certainly much of novel seems to originate in Stoker’s reading. He never visited Transylvania, despite the vivid descriptions in Dracula, and took all his local colour and accounts of local legends from research. The characterisations of the vampires, particularly the women, owe something to Sheridan Lefanu’s 1871 novel Carmilla, and it has been suggested that the epistolary form of the novel was influenced by Wilkie Collin’s The Woman in White, which is also told in diary form. However Stoker’s use of “supporting documentation” in the form of letters and fictional newspaper articles, adds to the form.
The novel was published in 1897, but as late as May of that year Stoker was using his original title “The Un-dead” – a term he coined and one that is indelibly associated with Dracula to this day.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
There is no interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Over the years different critics have claimed that Dracula and the figure of the vampire is an allegory for different forms of evil – from aristocratic greed, to male aggression, to female emancipation, to sexually transmitted disease. What does Dracula mean to you and what do you find most frightening about him?
- The writer Sarah Waters has described Dracula as ‘An exercise in masculine anxiety and nationalist paranoia’. Do you agree? What anxieties do you think Bram Stoker was expressing through the character of Dracula?
- What aspects of the novel do you think would have been most shocking and frightening to contemporary readers, and how does this contrast with a modern reading of the novel?
- A critic at The New York Times wrote of Dracula, ‘Those who cannot find their own reflection in Bram Stoker’s still-living creature are surely the undead.’ Do you think this is true? What aspects of yourself do you find in the character of Dracula?
- Dracula is one of the most filmed and adapted novels of all time and almost everyone has encountered the character of Dracula in some form or other, even if they’ve never read the book. Did you have an idea of Dracula before you read the novel and how was it different to Bram Stoker’s character?
- Why do you think the character of Dracula has endured so well?
- What effect does contact with Dracula have on the various characters in the novel? How does their behaviour change? Does this differ between the men and the women?
- “We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flow the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fought… Is it a wonder that we were a conquering face, that we were proud?”Dracula (p31-2)
Class is a strong theme throughout the novel; is it important that Dracula is a feudal landlord and what effect does it have on our reading of his character? How does Stoker characterise the peasants in Transylvania and the working-class of Whitby?
- The novel is, like Wuthering Heights and A Woman in White, not a straightforward narrative. Instead it is written in the form of diary entries, letters and ‘newspaper clippings’. Why do you think Stoker chose to frame the story in this way, and how successful do you think he is at evoking the different voices?
- Dracula is not the only character to live on in other novels – Mina Murray is also immortalised in the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. The story has her leading a team of superheroes including the Invisible Man and Doctor Jekyll, after the death of her husband. The story suggests she has picked up more from Dracula than Stoker admits…
Do you agree Mina and Dracula are the most interesting characters in the novel, and do you find Mina an unconventional heroine?
OTHER BOOKS BY BRAM STOKER
For a full bibliography see Wikipedia
His most popular novels today include:
The Snake’s Pass (1890)
The Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903)
The Lady of the Shroud (1909)
The Lair of the White Worm (1911)
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
NOVELS:
Carmilla ~ Sheridin Lefanu (Soft editions)
Interview with the Vampire ~ Anne Rice (Time Warner)
The Historian ~ Elizabeth Kostova (Time Warner)
Frankenstein ~ Mary Shelley (Vintage) – read our guide
GRAPHIC NOVELS
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ~ Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill (Titan)
BIOGRAPHY:
From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker ~ Paul Murray (Jonathan Cape)
Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula ~ Barbara Belford (Da Capo Press/Alfred Knopf)
ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES
Dracula's homepage
BBC guide
The Free Library
Wikipedia
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