Dracula - Softcover

Stoker, Bram

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014062063X ISBN 13: 9780140620634

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1994

Synopsis

Dracula is a unique horror masterpiece and the most famous of all vampire tales.

Few readers will ever forget the nightmare atmosphere of Count Dracula's sinister castle in Transylvania, the prowlings of the Un-dead, the blood-curdling tension as Bram Stoker's tale races towards a thrilling climax.

Dracula recounts the struggle of a group of men and a woman - Dr Seward, Dr Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker and his wife Mina - to destroy the vampire, whose sinister earth-filled coffins are discovered by Harker in a ruined chapel adjoining Dr Seward's asylum. Cruel and noble, evilly and fatally desirable to women, Dracula possesses a terrifying lust for power and, like Dr Jekyll or Conan Doyle's Moriarty, is one of the immortal fictional monsters.

About this title

Review

Dracula is one of the few horror books to be honored by inclusion in the Norton Critical Edition series. (The others are Frankenstein, The Turn of the Screw, Heart of Darkness, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Metamorphosis.) This 100th-anniversary edition includes not only the complete authoritative text of the novel with illuminating footnotes, but also four contextual essays, five reviews from the time of publication, five articles on dramatic and film variations, and seven selections from literary and academic criticism. Nina Auerbach of the University of Pennsylvania (author of Our Vampires, Ourselves) and horror scholar David J. Skal (author of Hollywood Gothic, The Monster Show, and Screams of Reason) are the editors of the volume. Especially fascinating are excerpts from materials that Bram Stoker consulted in his research for the book, and his working papers over the several years he was composing it. The selection of criticism includes essays on how Dracula deals with female sexuality, gender inversion, homoerotic elements, and Victorian fears of "reverse colonization" by politically turbulent Transylvania.

Book Description

While serving as actor Henry Irving's business manager at the Lyceum Theatre in London, Bram Stoker (1847-1912) also pursued his literary interests. In this Gothic horror novel of 1897, which brought him international fame, he presents the chilling vampire Count Dracula, modelled in part on Irving's powerful personality.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 014062063X
• ISBN 13: 9780140620634
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448