I’ve always loved horror stories. At the age of 7 or 8, I’d be reading The Pan Book Of Horror Stories or Aidan Chambers’ Haunted Houses by flashlight with the bed sheets pulled over my head (not because I should have been asleep, but to guard against vampires creeping up on me!) I always found these stories strangely comforting, a world of adventure into which a shy kid like me could retreat. Ghosts and monsters became part of my cultural DNA, constant companions through life. That’s why I write horror today, to make my own tiny contribution to the genre, which has given me so much.
If you’re interested in the literary roots of vampires, and Dracula in particular, I’d heartily recommend this nonfiction title. It delves into the origins of characters like the Count in earlier 19th-century texts and examines how and why Dracula became such a long-lasting cultural influence. It’s also very good on Bram Stoker’s life and less famous works.
Christopher Frayling has spent 45 years exploring the history of one of the most enduring figures in the history of mass culture - the vampire. Vampyres is a comprehensive and generously illustrated history and anthology of vampires in literature, from the folklore of Eastern Europe to the Romantics and beyond. Frayling recounts the most significant moments in gothic history, while extracts from a huge range of sources - including Bram Stoker's detailed research notes for Dracula, penny dreadfuls and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber , new to this edition - are contextualized and analysed. This revised and expanded edition brings…
I have often been asked why I became an expert on vampires. The answer always goes back to my childhood, when I went to horror and sci-fi movies and watched old vampire movies on TV. In 1976, I published my first book of poetry, The Dracula Poems. My vampire interest eventually combined with my background in Russian literature when I discovered Perkowski’s Vampires of the Slavs. I obtained my Ph.D. in Slavic Folklore from UVA and have kept up my interest in this fascinating subject ever since. I am planning another book on the period known as Magia Posthuma when there were “epidemics” of vampirism around Austro-Hungary.
Elizabeth Miller is one of the foremost scholars on Dracula and the literary (and cinematic) vampire. Although my research has focused on folklore about vampires and similar beings, you can’t really discuss the significance of vampires without discussing Dracula.
Elizabeth’s book tells you about Bram Stoker’s sources, his writing process, the geography of Dracula, and Vlad the Impaler, among other things, separating out facts from wrong ideas that have gotten passed around in popular culture. This book was invaluable for the chapter in my book discussing the novel Dracula.
To see our full range of Dracula studies, go to "Kindle Store" and search for DESERT ISLAND DRACULA LIBRARY.
Was Vlad the Impaler the inspiration for Bram Stoker's novel Dracula? No!
Did Stoker write about Transylvania from first-hand experience? No!
Has the model for Count Dracula's castle been found? No!
Must Count Dracula stay out of the sunlight? Absolutely not!
Literary sleuth Elizabeth Miller exposes these and numerous other popular distortions and fabrications that have plagued our understanding of Stoker and his famous novel.
Where is this nonsense coming from? This book will tell you.
I’ve always loved horror stories. At the age of 7 or 8, I’d be reading The Pan Book Of Horror Stories or Aidan Chambers’ Haunted Houses by flashlight with the bed sheets pulled over my head (not because I should have been asleep, but to guard against vampires creeping up on me!) I always found these stories strangely comforting, a world of adventure into which a shy kid like me could retreat. Ghosts and monsters became part of my cultural DNA, constant companions through life. That’s why I write horror today, to make my own tiny contribution to the genre, which has given me so much.
This is the first in a series of alternate history stories, set in 1888 (later volumes run right through the 20th century), in a world in which Count Dracula triumphed over his arch-enemy Professor Van Helsing. He’s now married to Queen Victoria and ruling over a London full of bloodsuckers!
A very clever idea which neatly ties in all sorts of vampire-related fictional strands.
It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort Vlad Tepes, the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. Peppered with familiar characters from Victorian history and fiction, the novel follows vampire Genevieve Dieudonne and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club as they strive to solve the mystery of the Ripper murders.
Anno Dracula is a rich and panoramic tale, combining horror, politics, mystery and romance to create a unique and compelling alternate history. Acclaimed novelist Kim Newman explores the darkest depths of a reinvented Victorian London.
I saw Francis Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992, but studied the novel only after I created a photo story,The Ultimate Dracula(Munich, 2012). Next to the images, my book presented the true location Stoker had in mind for his fictitious Castle Dracula (No, notBram Castle), and the historical person he referred to while speaking about Count Dracula (No, notVlad the Impaler). The next steps were discovering the true locations of Carfax and the Scholomance, unraveling the backgrounds of the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, and unearthing the first US serialization. I simply love to solve riddles. By now, I am organizing international Draculaconferences.
This book is key to understanding the “transmediation” of Dracula: the metamorphosis of Stoker’s story by adapting it for new media, such as theatrical and movie versions. As Bram Stoker died in 1911, his widow Florence played a key role in negotiating the rights for such modifications, and fighting the pirated screen version of Nosferatu created in Germany by Prana Film. As David Skal put it, Draculais very much a story about control, and the subsequent developments show how Bram and then Florence tried to keep the lid on the unauthorized dissemination and adaptation of the Draculanovel—but failed in the end. Highly recommended reading for all who are interested in the question of how Draculabecame so popular all over the world.
The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. Most of us can recite without prompting the salient characteristics of the vampire: sleeping by day in its coffin, rising at dusk to feed on the blood of the living; the ability to shapeshift into a bat, wolf, or mist; a mortal vulnerability to a wooden stake through the heart or a shaft of sunlight. In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David Skal…
Ah... we finally learn what happened to Vlad's memory about his relationship with Cawti! I love his youthful giddiness, but it's also quite sad, really, that he's forced to make a choice about what to remember.
Tsalmoth is the next installment in Steven Brust’s bestselling Vlad Taltos series―hold on to your hats and get ready for another swashbuckling adventure!
First comes love. Then comes marriage…
Vlad Taltos is in love. With a former assassin who may just be better than he is at the Game. Women like this don’t come along every day and no way is he passing up a sure bet.
So a wedding is being planned. Along with a shady deal gone wrong and a dead man who owes Vlad money. Setting up the first and trying to deal with the second is…
Scary books and movies hooked me early in life and never let go. I’m fascinated by the themes that are explored in all of the various sub-genres of horror. I’m intrigued by the lore that’s created, and I’m impressed with the imagination of so many horror creators. Horror remains and always will be one of the most popular genres of storytelling.
This graphic novel adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel incorporated an idea that I thought was brilliant—“casting” Bela Lugosi once again as Dracula, with the blessing of the Lugosi family. The adaptation is faithful to the book, and the artwork is a loving and beautiful rendition of Lugosi as the vampire who started it all.
For the first time ever Bram Stoker’s gothic masterpiece is being united with the definitive screen Dracula, Bela Lugosi, in an all new graphic novel.
Bram Stoker. Bela Lugosi. Two names forever bound byDracula.
15 years after the novel’s publication,Dracula creator and author Bram Stoker passed away. He never got a chance to see how actor Bela Lugosi’s ground-breaking stage and screen portrayal of his character electrified and terrified audiences in the late 20s and early 30s. This performance became iconic and set the standard by which all actors taking on the caped mantle would be judged. With a story…
At about age fifteen, I fell in love with nineteenth-century Gothic horror. I read all the classics in just a few months: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Edgar Allen Poe… And then I ran out. Most twentieth-century horror lacked the understanding that evil’s true target is not the body but the soul. Horror fiction, more than any other genre, is the laboratory of the soul, the place where we can experiment with good and evil to follow the consequences of each to their fullest and therefore truest conclusions. And since I ran out of such books to read—I wrote one.
After Bram Stoker and Vlad the Impaler, the real person most closely associated with vampires has to be Bela Lugosi—so why not write a horror novel with him as the villain? This book underscores the important role that unsettling and dramatic occurrences can play in shaking us out of our own accustomed vices, as well as the difficulty we often face when trying to discern the difference between the works of evil and the truly mundane. After all, Bela Lugosi is nothing more than a tired, sad old man still pining for his glory days on the silver screen—isn’t he?
Hollywood, 1956. Journalist and war widow Evangeline Kilhooley is assigned to write a ";star profile" of the fading actor Bela Lugosi, made famous by his role as Count Dracula. During a series of interviews, Lugosi draws Evi into his curious Eastern European background, gradually revealing the link between Old World shadows and the twilight realm of modern horror films.
Along the way, Evi meets another English expatriate, Hugo Radelle, a movie buff who offers to help with her research. As their relationship deepens, Evi begins to suspect that he knows more about her and her soldier husband than he is…
I was introduced to vampires through Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows fame, but I was a child and found the show boring. But, when I was 15, I was handed the paperback edition of Salem’s Lot and it scared me to death. I was hooked, reading books, and watching movies about vampires whenever the chance arose. When I wrote the first draft of Redemption, it sat for years before I reworked it, reading Dracula again and taking notes, researching Vlad the Impaler, and watching lots of vampire movies before re-writing it. Since then, I’ve continued reading vampire fiction and watching movies and shows about the creatures whenever I can.
This Icelandic Dracula remained hidden from the world-at-large as merely a translation of the original for more than a century before Hans Corneel de Roos translated the Icelandic back into English. What he discovered is that Asmundsson took the liberty of making Dracula his own book. A Nordic spin on the vampire is reason enough to discover this interesting take on Stoker’s Dracula. Two-thirds of the book takes place at the Count’s castle in Transylvania where the notorious vampire is given much more depth and voice. Nordic lore spices this story up as well as a very seductive vampiress. The book is also much shorter than Stoker’s, which makes it an easy read.
Powers of Darkness is an incredible literary discovery: In 1900, Icelandic publisher and writer Valdimar Ásmundsson set out to translate Bram Stoker’s world-famous 1897 novel Dracula. Called Makt Myrkranna (literally, “Powers of Darkness”), this Icelandic edition included an original preface written by Stoker himself. Makt Myrkranna was published in Iceland in 1901 but remained undiscovered outside of the country until 1986, when Dracula scholarship was astonished by the discovery of Stoker’s preface to the book. However, no one looked beyond the preface and deeper into Ásmundsson’s story.In 2014, literary researcher Hans de Roos dove into the full text of Makt…
I picked up Dracula in my desire to read more classics. I was not prepared for what a page-turner it is! The first chapter will send chills up your spine and the pace never slows. I especially love how Stoker employes multiple narrators and narrative devices (letters, journal entries, etc.) to tell the story of the evil and mysterious Count Dracula. Happy to say that the original Dracula story is also the best.
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What is this book about?
'The very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years' Arthur Conan Doyle
A masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also probes identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. It begins when Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, and makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England - an unmanned ship is wrecked; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master' - and a determined group of adversaries…
So much of our culture and our fiction comes from taking older stories and ideas and reworking, blending, and adapting them into new forms. This cultural mixture has gifted us with some of the greatest works of English literature, and I’ve always been surprised and delighted to discover what people can pull out of older works and make. It’s why my first novels have followed the theme, and why I will always have time to check out a new story that builds on older ideas to create something new.
I have a weakness for authors who can seamlessly write in another author’s style, and The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count blends Conan Doyle and Stoker perfectly. Holmes and Watson are drawn into the tale of Count Dracula when they are called to investigate the mystery of a ship whose crew have vanished, adding their genius to the vampire hunters working to keep the Count from the shores of England. With Dracula Daily taking the online world by storm, this is the perfect time to look up another take on these classic tales.
The year is 1890. A ship is discovered adrift off the English coast, its crew missing, its murdered captain lashed to the wheel, and its only passenger is a sinister black dog. This impenetrable mystery is clearly a case for the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, but for the first time in his illustrious career the great detective is baffled. Clearly the crew have been murdered and dumped overboard, but what can account for the captain's expression of imponderable terror and his acute loss of blood, or the ship's strange cargo - fifty boxes of earth? The game is afoot, and Sherlock…
