Photo reproduced with kind permission by Elizabeth Miller. It’s a picture of the 1st edition
Gothic Mastery at its best––and the villain who betters all others!
The plot is infamous; solicitor Jonathan Harker takes a foreign assignment. He is to travel to Transylvania to his firm’s mysterious client, a Count Dracula, where he must finalise the documentation on several purchased estates. However he soon realises that his courteous host is keeping him prisoner and planning to move to England for some diabolical purpose. Once Jonathan escapes he rushes back home where it becomes his quest––and the quest of his friends, including wife Mina, and doctors John Steward and Abraham van Helsing––to stop Dracula before it’s too late.
The slight quibbles one could make about the text––it is overlong and somewhat Victorian in its sentiments towards women’s sexuality––are far outweighed by its triumphs. Dracula’s journey to England on the Demeter, written in log form by its crew and accounting all sorts of terrifying mysteries, is particularly harrowing to read. As are other scenes, like Lucy’s ‘true’ death and the final chase in the Carpathians. Dracula might not have been the first of the vampire genre, but it certainly defined it.
One of my all-time favourites. I can’t help loving it.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh how I loved this book–even better than Frankenstein. I never have understood how people can love Stephen King when they’ve got Dracula to compare for writing and horror.
Frankenstein is a funny book. I still don’t know how I feel about it. I found it ‘chunky’ ; plot one minute, philosophy the next’ then plot etcetc. If she incorporated them more evenly it might’ve been better – but gosh, she was only 19 wasn’t she when she wrote it! I’m being picky
Hate to be the odd man out, but I actually like Frankenstein more. I’ve always wanted to read a good vampire story, but they always let me down. Dracula just seemed to have way too many superpowers that seemed to be thrown in last second whenever he was in a jam. Plus, I wasn’t fussy on there being an “expert” on him in the book- how exactly did that happen? Believe it or not I liked the Francis Ford Coppola’s movie version much better.
I really did love this book. There are some great new versions and all, but wow, the original has some true punch!
I am currently re-reading it. And loving it!