Since its publication in 1897, Dracula has enthralled generation after generation of readers with the same spellbinding power with which Count Dracula enthralls his victims. Though Bram Stoker did not...
Since its publication in 1897, Dracula has enthralled generation after generation of readers with the same spellbinding power with which Count Dracula enthralls his victims. Though Bram Stoker did not...
Due to publisher restrictions, your digital library cannot purchase additional copies of this title. We apologize if there is a long holds list. You may want to see if other editions of this title are available from your digital library instead.
Due to publisher restrictions, your digital library cannot purchase additional copies of this title. We apologize if there is a long holds list. You may want to see if other editions of this title are available from your digital library instead.
Description-
Since its publication in 1897, Dracula has enthralled generation after generation of readers with the same spellbinding power with which Count Dracula enthralls his victims. Though Bram Stoker did not invent vampires, and in fact based his character’s life-in-death on extensive research in European folklore, his novel elevated the nocturnal creature to iconic stature, spawning a genre of stories and movies that flourishes to this day. But a century of imitations has done nothing to diminish the power of Stoker’s tale. As his chilling, suave monster stalks his prey from a crumbling castle in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania to an insane asylum in England to the bedrooms of his swooning female victims, the drama is infused with a more and more exquisite measure of sensuality and suspense.
Dracula is a classic of Gothic horror, an undying wellspring of modern mythology, and an irresistible entertainment.
Excerpts-
From the Introduction
From the Introduction By Joan Acocella
'Unclean, unclean!' Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mina's friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, Essex, tells how he and a colleague, warned that Mina might be in danger, broke into her bedroom one night and found her kneeling on the edge of her bed. Bending over her was a tall figure, dressed in black.
His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man's bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.
Mina's husband, Jonathan, lay on the bed, unconscious, a few inches from the scene of his wife's violation.
Later, between sobs, Mina relates what happened. She was in bed with Jonathan when a strange mist crept into the room. Soon, it congealed into the figure of a man — Count Dracula.
With a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying as he did so: 'First, a little refreshment to reward my exertions...' And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon my throat! The Count took a long drink. Then he drew back, and spoke sweet words to Mina. 'Flesh of my flesh', he called her, 'my bountiful wine-press'. But now he wanted something else. He wanted her in his power from then on. A person who has had his — or, more often, her — blood sucked repeatedly by a vampire turns into a vampire too, but the conversion can be accomplished more quickly if the victim also sucks the vampire's blood. And so, Mina says,
he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he ... seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some of the — Oh, my God!
The unspeakable happened — she sucked his blood, at his breast — at which point her friends stormed into the room. Dracula vanished, and, Seward relates, Mina uttered 'a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so despairing ... that it will ring in my ears to my dying day'.
That scene, and Stoker's whole novel, is still ringing in our ears. Stoker did not invent vampires. If we define them, broadly, as the undead — spirits who rise, embodied, from their graves to torment the living — they have been part of human imagining since ancient times. Eventually, vampire superstition became concentrated in Eastern Europe. (It survives there today. In 2007, a Serbian named Miroslav Milosevic — no relation — drove a stake into the grave of Slobodan Milosevic.) It was presumably in Easter Europe that people worked out what became the standard methods for eliminating a vampire: you drive a wooden stake through his heart, or cut off his head, or burn him — or, to be on the safe side, all three. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, there were outbreaks of vampire hysteria in Western Europe; numerous stakings were reported in Germany. By 1734, the word 'vampire' had entered the English language. In 1750 the first scholarly treatise on the subject appeared — the work of Dom Augustin Calmet, a French Benedictine monk who devoutly believed in these...
About the Author-
Abraham “Bram” Stoker (1847–1912) was born in Ireland. He was a theater critic in Dublin and then manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, as well as the author of many novels and short stories.
Joan Acocella is a cultural critic for The New Yorker. She is the author of several books, including Mark Morris and Willa Cather and The Politics of Criticism. She lives in New York.
Reviews-
Starred review from April 27, 2015 This full-cast production is a masterly depiction of the Victorian gothic ethos in Stoker’s classic tale. Told through a series of letters and diary entries, the novel begins when Count Dracula lures a young English lawyer named Jonathan Harker to his castle in Transylvania under the pretense of a real estate transaction, but Harker soon discovers the count is a vampire and the diabolical intent in the real estate deal. It falls to the resourceful Professor Van Helsing, along with a handful of intrepid heroes, including Harker and his fiancée, Mina, to stop the count’s evil plans. The readers each have a distinctive voice for their characters and do a perfect job of conveying the emotional content of the assorted letters and diaries. Jamie Parker’s portrayal of Harker is particularly stirring, especially as the character slowly pieces together the horrific truth about Dracula. Alison Pettitt succeeds at providing a gamut of emotions for the voice of Mina throughout the story. Each reader hits the mark with precision. For anyone who has never read (or for anyone looking to revisit) this classic tale of gothic horror, this is a fine way to do so.
Dias - Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a classic novel horror based in the United Kingdom. I would recommend this story to people that enjoy horror stories. The beginning of this story entices the readers to read more. Not being a horror story fan I lost interest after the third chapter. This story is about the notorious Count Dracula, king of vampires, and Van Helsing the known Vampire hunter, and his group of comrades. For those that enjoy vampire stories this is one of the books you need to read, it introduces a new person that most vampire fans do not know about. You learn about Van Helsing and his understudy, Lucy western and Count Dracula.
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Dias - Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a classic novel horror based in the United Kingdom. I would recommend this story to people that enjoy horror stories. The beginning of this story entices the readers to read more. Not being a horror story fan I lost interest after the third chapter. This story is about the notorious Count Dracula, king of vampires, and Van Helsing the known Vampire hunter, and his group of comrades. For those that enjoy vampire stories this is one of the books you need to read, it introduces a new person that most vampire fans do not know about. You learn about Van Helsing and his understudy, Lucy western and Count Dracula.
