BRAM STOKER
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The Authoritative Resource for Information about Bram Stoker’s Life and Work
Legacy of Dracula
The Unprecedented Impact of Bram Stoker’s Novel
Page updated 26 February 2013
Kansas City Journal
Kansas City, Missouri
03 December 1899
Musical and Dramatic Notes
Since arriving in Boston, Bram Stoker, Manager of Sir Henry Irving, has received a proposition to dramatize his latest book, “Dracula”. If it put on the stage, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will, it is said, soon become a pleasant memory.
The Times Dispatch
Richmond, Virginia
15 July 1906
Name or Sobriquet
Please tell me whether Bram Stoker is the name of the author of Dracula or a pen name.
The matter is too new for any dictionary we have. On the reverse of the title page, however, we note that the book is copyrighted by Bram Stoker and this is commonly conclusive that the name is real.
The Ocala Evening Star
Ocala, Florida
31 January 1908
The effects used by Dracula in the opening of his act with the Donnelly and Hatfield Magnificent Minstrels are of a new and novel description. This novelty performer makes his entrance in a darkened cavern in the guise of a frolicsome demon brandishing a sword from which scintillates flashes of electric light. A quick change shows Dracula in a wonderful exhibition of amazing contortion feats on a high pedestal and on a trapeze.The Donnelly and Hatfield Minstrel Show will appear here at the armory opera house, Monday night February 3d. Seats on sale at the Ocala News Company.
The Seattle Star
Seattle, Washington
22 June 1906
The Theaters
At the Star Theater the present clever bill, including Armstrong & Holly: Bert Levy, the cartonist; Dracula, the wonderful contortionist and Lansing Rowan and Harry Fahrney, is playing to a succession of big houses. The performance Sunday will be continuous. Next Monday, the Apollo Four, Arthur Rigby, the veteran minstrel man, the cycle wire kings, the Hoffmans and other big turns will begin their engagement at the Star.
The Times, London
Tuesday, 15 February 1927
The Times, London
Wednesday, 26 April 1939
Nosferatu
1922
Review of Dracula, by Bram Stoker
in “Country Life” magazine
June 19, 1897
An excerpt from the widely acclaimed 1917 dissertation by American, Dorothy Scarborough (1878-1935), "The supernatural in modern English fiction".......
It is in Bram Stoker's Dracula that one finds the tensest most dreadful modern story of vampirism. This novel seems to omit no detail of terror, for every aspect of vampire horror is touched upon with brutal and ghastly effect. The combination of ghouls vampires ghosts werewolves and other awful elements is almost unendurable, yet the book loses in effect toward the last, for the mind cannot endure four hundred pages of vampiric outrage and respond to fresh impressions of horror. The initial vampire here is a Hungarian count who after terrorizing his own country for years, transports himself to England to start his ravages there. Each victim in turn becomes a vampire. The combination of modern science with medieval superstition to fight the scourge using garlic and sprigs of the wild rose together with blood transfusion is interesting. All the resources of modern science are pitted against the infection and the complications are dramatically thrilling. The book is not advised as suitable reading for one sitting alone at night.
WEIRD SUPERSTITIONS
The Advertiser, Adelaide, SA
5 September 1929
The sophisticated reader of to-day may smile incredulously at the idea of vampire men and women who seek the blood of the living, but the superstition still prevails in many parts of Europe, particularly In Russia. Bram Stoker made the hair of his readers stand on end when he wrote the story "Dracula" which in its dramatic form is to be presented at the Theatre Royal to night. The book was translated into many languages. Some scoffed, others were thrilled, but to those who scoffed Bram Stoker made the invariable reply. "Read my book in the right atmosphere, and see what happens."
To-night, at the Theatre Royal "Dracula" will be given all the weird atmosphere necessary. The story concerns one Count Dracula, the vampire, who has been dead for centuries, and is yet living, emerging at certain times from his earthly resting place to prey on mortals sucking from them the blood without which his horrible existence cannot continue. His ghastly work must be finished by dawn, at which hour he must return to his grave. The play shows how his uncanny powers were ended after sensational happenings, and he went to that last "peace" he had avoided for centuries. In "Dracula" Nat Madison has a dramatic role as the unfortunate victim of the vampire count, hating his master and fearing him at the tame time. Ashton Jarry will take the role or the sinister count, and Bertha Riccardo will play Mina. The arrival of Dracula is heralded by the howling of dogs. Bats flap ay the window. Furniture moves mysteriously and rats scurry up the walls. Ellis Irving, Helga Rolunde, Leonard Stephens, Guy Hastings, and Frank Boyde complete the cast. The play is so startling that children under 14 years will not be admitted.
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1901 Dracula
First Paperback Edition
Archibald Constable
My dear Bram Stoker,
I am sure that you will not think it an impertinence if I write to tell you how very much I have enjoyed reading Dracula. I think it is the very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years. It is really wonderful how with so much exciting interest over so long a book there is never an anticlimax. It holds you from the very start and grows more and more engrossing until it is quite painfully vivid. The old Professor is most excellent and so are the two girls. I congratulate you with all my heart for having written so fine a book.
With all kindest remembrances to Mrs Bram Stoker & yourself.
Yours very truly,
A Conan Doyle
August 20, 1897
This letter is an excerpt from the 2012 publication:
Amazon.com: Bram Stoker's Dracula: The Critical Feast (9781937002213): John Edgar Browning,
“And so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine. You would help these men to hunt me and frustrate me in my designs! You know now, and they know in part already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path. They should have kept their energies for use closer to home. Whilst they played wits against me - against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born - I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for awhile; and shall later on be my companion and my helper. You shall be avenged in turn; for not one of them but shall minister to your needs. You have aided in thwarting me; now you shall come to my call.”
-Dracula, Bram Stoker 1897
Originally published in the
Manchester Guardian on 15 June 1897
A LOOK AT DRACULA, ONE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER ITS CREATOR'S DEATH
Sunday Tribune India
This review of Dracula was originally published in The Spectator
on 31 July 1897, and again on 28 April 2012
Mr. Bram Stoker gives us the impression — we may be doing him an injustice —of having deliberately laid himself out in Dracula to eclipse all previous efforts in the domain of the horrible — to ‘go one better’ than Wilkie Collins (whose method of narration he has closely followed), Sheridan Le Fanu, and all the other professors of the flesh-creeping school. Count Dracula, who gives his name to the book, is a Transylvanian noble who purchases an estate in England, and in connection with the transfer of the property Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor, visits him in his ancestral castle. Jonathan Harker has a terrible time of it, for the Count — who is a vampire of immense age, cunning and experience — keeps him as a prisoner for several weeks, and when the poor young man escapes from the gruesome charnel-house of his host, he nearly dies of brain-fever in a hospital at Budapest.
The scene then shifts to England, where the Count arrives by sea in the shape of a dog-fiend, after destroying the entire crew, and resumes operations in various uncanny manifestations, selecting as his chief victim Miss Lucy Westenra, the fiancée of the Honourable Arthur Holmwood, heir presumptive to Lord Godalming. The story then resolves itself into the history of the battle between Lucy’s protectors, including two rejected suitors — an American and a ‘mad’ doctor —and a wonderfully clever specialist from Amsterdam, against her unearthly persecutor. The clue is furnished by Jonathan Harker, whose betrothed, Mina Murray, is a bosom friend of Lucy’s, and the fight is long and protracted.
Lucy succumbs, and, worse still, is temporarily converted into a vampire. How she is released from this unpleasant position and restored to a peaceful post-mortem existence, how Mina is next assailed by the Count, how he is driven from England, and finally exterminated by the efforts of the league — for all these and a great many more thrilling details, we must refer our readers to the pages of Mr Stoker’s clever but cadaverous romance. Its strength lies in the invention of incident, for the sentimental element is decidedly mawkish. Mr Stoker has shown considerable ability in the use that he has made of all the available traditions of vampirology, but we think his story would have been all the more effective if he had chosen an earlier period. The up-to-dateness of the book — the phonograph diaries, typewriters and so on — hardly fits in with the mediaeval methods which ultimately secure the victory for Count Dracula’s foes.
In Volume 38 of the satirical "Longman's Magazine"(1901)
Andrew Lang poked at Dracula -
The rules of vampiring, as indicated by Mr. Stoker, are too numerous and too elaborate. One does not see why the leading vampire, Count Dracula, could not bolt out of the box where he was finally run to earth by a solicitor named Jonathan. If he could fly about as a bat, why did he crawl down steep walls head foremost? The rules of the game of Vampire ought to be printed in an appendix; at present the pastime is as difficult as Bridge. Perhaps I do not understand the rules.
1. Every vampire, all day, must lie in consecrated ground. He can be stumped when in his ground, not when out of it.
2. All day a vampire is off-side.
3. No vampire may enter a house uninvited.
4. No vampire may cross salt water except at ebb tide and full tide.
5. Every person bitten by a vampire becomes a vampire. (This rule strikes at the root of morality.)
6. No vampire can vamp a person protected by garlic. (The peasantry of Southern Europe always smell of garlic, perhaps as security against vampires.)
7. A vampire, staked through the heart with a sharp piece of wood, is out.
8. Every man should stake his own young woman if she is a vampire.
These appear to be the chief rules: there are others to which a person of taste would rather not allude.
Palace Theatre, Sydney, Australia
ca. 1930
This advertisement for Dracula appeared in
The New Book List, General Theological Seminary, New York (1897) as part of a full-page colored inset of books offered by
Archibald Constable and Co.
Dracula
Wood engraving by Felix Hoffman, 1965
Dacre Stoker accepts an award
on behalf of Bram Stoker
at the 2013 Retro Back Film Festival
in Grenada, Spain
