Dracula

Table of Contents

 

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BRAM (ABRAHAM) STOKER (1847 – 1912) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. He overcame an incapacitating childhood illness to attend Trinity College, Dublin, where he distinguished himself in athletics, became president of both Philosophical and Historical Societies and graduated in Pure Mathematics. From 1870 to 1877 he worked as a civil servant in Dublin Castle and published
The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland
(1879). During this period he wrote dramatic criticism, and in 1878 his strong admiration for Henry Irving led the actor to appoint him acting and business manager at London's Lyceum Theatre, an experience that produced
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving
(1906). Stoker wrote short stories and novels, a lecture in praise of America and the amusing
Famous Imposters
(1910). Few of Stoker's works, which include
The Mystery of the Sea
(1902) and
The Lair of the White Worm
(1911), are now read, except for his very successful
Dracula
(1897), a novel composed of journals and letters, telling of the vampire Count Dracula and involving hypnotism and other occult interests. The novel was a bestseller upon first publication, soon went into paperback and is still selling steadily. Many film versions have been made, two of the most memorable being Universal's early talkie of 1931 starring Bela Lugosi and the Hammer Films
Dracula
(1958), which established Christopher Lee as the cinema's new king of vampires. Besides the numerous Hammer remakes and sequels, other versions have included Werner Herzog's idiosyncratic homage to Murnau,
Nosferatu
(1979) with Klaus Kinski, while Francis Ford Coppola's
Bram Stoker's Dracula
(1992) offered a visually stylish interpretation in many ways faithful to the novel, though Gary Oldman's Count had now become a romantic hero.

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First published in Great Britain by Archibald Constable and Company 1897
First published in the United States of America by Doubleday & McClure Co. 1899
This edition published in Penguin Books 2010

 

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Stoker, Bram, 1847 – 1912.
Dracula / Bram Stoker.
p. cm.—(Penguin classics deluxe edition)

ISBN : 978-1-101-54979-7

1. Dracula, Count (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Transylvania (Romania)—
Fiction. 3. Whitby (England)—Fiction. 4. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6037.T617D7 2010
823'.8—dc22 2010026242

 

 

 

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TO
MY DEAR FRIEND
HOMMY-BEG

How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of later-day belief may stand forth as simple fact. There is throughout no statement of past things wherein memory may err, for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary, given from the standpoints and within the range of knowledge of those who made them.

3 May. Bistritz
. – Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most Western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (
Mem
., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called ‘paprika hendl,' and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it.

Having some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a noble of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.

In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities : Saxons in the south, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the west, and Szekelys in the east and north. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it. I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (
Mem
., I must ask the Count all about them.)

I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping soundly then. I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was ‘mamaliga,' and eggplant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call ‘impletata.' (
Mem
., get recipe for this also.) I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station at 7.30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move. It seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?