DraculaA Summary | Britannica.com

Dracula, Gothic novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. The most popular literary work derived from vampire legends, Dracula became the basis for an entire genre of literature and film.

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Vlad the Impaler

What is the real story behind the prince who may have inspired the character Dracula?

SUMMARY: One of the most spectacular novels of the 19th century, Dracula still frightens its readers today just as it did over a century ago. The story, like that of Frankenstein, has become a modern myth and has been performed countless times on stage, radio, television, and in film. Presented in a series of formats (such as letters, diaries, even news items), it tells the story of a young London lawyer, Jonathan Harker, recruited by Count Dracula to acquire property for him in England. Harkers journey to the Counts Eastern European castle in Transylvania (now in Romania) is an ominous one, with ravenous wolves attacking him along the way, and after his arrival the sense of dread and fear is palpable as the tension rises and Harker slowly begins to realize he is a prisoner in the castle and that his client possess horrible eccentricities. Perhaps the novels most powerful moment is when Harker sees his employer crawling face-downwards on the outside wall of his castle, like a bat.

Count Dracula, as he learns, is an undead villain who uses his supernatural powers to lure and prey upon innocent victims whom he bites in order to gain the blood he needs to survive. The novel is written chiefly in the form of journals kept by the principal charactersHarker, who contacts the vampire in his Transylvanian castle; Harkers fiance (later his wife), Mina, adored by the Count; the well-meaning Dr. Seward; and Lucy Westenra, a victim who herself becomes a vampire. The doctor and friends destroy Dracula in the end, but only after they have driven a stake through Lucys heart and cut off her head in order to save her soul. After Harker finally escapes back to England and Dracula follows, a dramatic pursuit of Dracula back to Transylvania ensues, whereupon the vampire is finally killed.

Dracula combined central European folktales of the nosferatu, or undead, with historical accounts of the 15th-century prince Vlad the Impaler, who allegedly impaled 100,000 victims and was given the epithet Dracula (a derivative of Romanian drac, or devil). Critics have seen the storys vampirism as a lurid Victorian literary sublimation of sexuality.

A 2009 sequel to the original, Dracula: The Un-Dead, based on the novelists own notes and excisions from the original, was cowritten by Dacre Stoker (great-grandnephew of the author) and Ian Holt. It is set in London in 1912, and it features Bram Stoker as a character.

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DraculaA Summary | Britannica.com

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero