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Vintage Classics Editions of Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Penguin Random House
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Bram Stoker’s Dracula, First Edition, 1897 Published in Westminster by the Archibald Constable and Company
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Count Dracula is the title character of Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula. He is considered to be both the prototypical and the archetypal vampire in subsequent works of fiction. The character has appeared frequently in popular culture, from films to animated media.
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englishlitty
“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! ”
-Dracula, Bram Stoker, 1897
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Can’t believe Bram Stoker once sent a 2000-word fan letter to Walt Whitman which included his exact height, weight and how much he loved his poems and wanted to be friends with him, and that Whitman wrote back saying he liked his letter and hoped they could meet some day, how cute is that
And then he finally got to meet him and Stoker said “I found him all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him” HOW CUTE IS THAT
bram stroker just mailed walt whitman his grindr profile just like that huh
Ok, I went to look this up, and it is amazing. Bram Stoker actually wrote this long-ass stream of consciousness letter that spanned about 2000 words and which–judging by most sites–had 0 paragraph breaks and just went on and on about his Feelings. He then proceeded to keep that letter in his desk for four years because he was too shy to send it. He finally sent it, along with a slightly less rambly letter, on fuckin Valentine’s day in 1876. In it are such wonders as:
If I were before your face I would like to shake hands with you, for I feel that I would like you. I would like to call you Comrade and to talk to you as men who are not poets do not often talk. I think that at first a man would be ashamed, for a man cannot in a moment break the habit of comparative reticence that has become a second nature to him; but I know I would not long be ashamed to be natural before you. You are a true man, and I would like to be one myself, and so I would be towards you as a brother and as a pupil to his master. In this age no man becomes worthy of the name without an effort. You have shaken off the shackles and your wings are free. I have the shackles on my shoulders still—but I have no wings.
[…]
If you care to know who it is that writes this, my name is Abraham Stoker (Junior). My friends call me Bram. I live at 43 Harcourt St., Dublin. I am a clerk in the service of the Crown on a small salary. I am twenty-four years old. Have been champion at our athletic sports (Trinity College, Dublin) and have won about a dozen cups. I have also been President of the College Philosophical Society and an art and theatrical critic of a daily paper. I am six feet two inches high and twelve stone weight naked and used to be forty-one or forty-two inches round the chest. I am ugly but strong and determined and have a large bump over my eyebrows. I have a heavy jaw and a big mouth and thick lips—sensitive nostrils—a snubnose and straight hair. I am equal in temper and cool in disposition and have a large amount of self control and am naturally secretive to the world. I take a delight in letting people I don’t like—people of mean or cruel or sneaking or cowardly disposition—see the worst side of me. I have a large number of acquaintances and some five or six friends—all of which latter body care much for me.
[…]
It is vain for me to try to quote any instances of what thoughts of yours I like best—for I like them all and you must feel that you are reading the true words of one who feels with you. You see, I have called you by your name. I have been more candid with you—have said more about myself to you than I have ever said to any one before. You will not be angry with me if you have read so far. You will not laugh at me for writing this to you. It was with no small effort that I began to write and I feel reluctant to stop, but I must not tire you any more. If you ever would care to have more you can imagine, for you have a great heart, how much pleasure it would be to me to write more to you. How sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman’s eyes and a child’s wishes to feel that he can speak so to a man who can be if he wishes father, and brother and wife to his soul. I don’t think you will laugh, Walt Whitman, nor despise me, but at all events I thank you for all the love and sympathy you have given me in common with my kind.
Three weeks later–which, considering the speed of transatlantic mail at the time, pretty much means immediately–Walt Whitman wrote back. He had, at the time, been recovering from a paralytic stroke three years earlier that had left him, in his own words, “entirely shattered—doubtless permanently, from paralysis and other ailments,” but he still found the time to respond with a much briefer but still very affectionate letter, the opening paragraph of which read as follows:
My dear young man, Your letters have been most welcome to me—welcome to me as Person and as Author—I don’t know which most—You did well to write me so unconventionally, so fresh, so manly, and so affectionately, too. I too hope (though it is not probable) that we shall one day meet each other. Meantime I send you my friendship and thanks.
Despite Whitman’s parenthetical remark about the improbability of meeting, Stoker did eventually manage to call on Whitman a couple of times some years later, and expressed that
I found him all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him: large-minded, broad-viewed, tolerant to the last degree; incarnate sympathy; understanding with an insight that seemed more than human.
Whitman, meanwhile, found Stoker “an adroit lad,” and “like a breath of good, healthy, breezy sea air.” Adorable.
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Okay, this is a microscopically petty peeve, but: no, the character of Quincey Morris in Bram Stoker’s Dracula would not have struck contemporary audiences as particularly unusual. Yes, the notion of an American cowboy on a squad of English vampire hunters seems deranged to us, but at the time the book was published, the American cowboy was a stock Exotic Foreigner™ archetype in Victorian popular fiction. He’s basically the 1890s equivalent of throwing in a ninja.
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Manuscript of Bram Stoker’s Dracula playscript, from 1897.
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“The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.”
literature posters; dracula by bram stoker
wordsnquotes
I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not confess to my own soul.
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Source: wordsnquotes
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Mists and vapors are the traditional signifiers of the Gothic landscape. The contribute to the gloom, terror, and ruggedness of sublime landscapes, with their suggestion of “natural power.” […] Vapors are composed of a mass of particles, such as dust, fireflies, or snow, each connoting dispersal or proliferation. During Jonathan’s first trip to Castle Dracula, “fine” and “powdery” snow starts falling (D 19), and it comforts Jonathan like a soft blanket. His second trip takes place during a snowstorm where “snow flurries […] come and go as warnings” (D 309), and release and absorb ghosts. Dracula blends into this gothic landscape, which has become alive with mysterious natural powers. Such a mimetic relation to nature could already be found in Varney’s dramatic entrance during a great hail-storm in Varney the Vampyre. The patterning of the hail merged with the beating of Varney’s nails on the glass: “It is his finger-nails upon the glass the produces the sound so like the hail, now that the hail has ceased.” In Dracula’s case, however, the air is literally alive […] What is more, Dracula himself turns into a magical landscape, releasing supernatural emanations. Van Helsing’s description of Romania is an appropriate portrait of the Count. The wounds and orifices in his body can be compared to “deep caverns and fissures that reach none know whither”; his mouth, to a volcano, “some of whose openings still send out waters of strange properties, and gases that kill and make to vivify.” Van Helsing’s conclusion to his portrait epitomises Dracula’s occult physical and psychic powers: “Doubtless, there is something magnetic or electric in these combinations of occult forces which work for physical life in a strange way.”
Nathalie Saudo, “Every Speck of Dust […] a Devouring Monster in Embryo: The Vampire’s Effluvia in Dracula by Bram Stoker” in Post/modern Dracula: From Victorian Themes to Postmodern Praxis
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How can I escape from this dreadful thing of night and gloom and fear?
Bram Stoker, Dracula
