Bierman, Joseph S. (1998). "A Crucial Stage in the Writing of Dracula". In Hughes, William; Smith, Andrew (eds.). Bram Stoker: History, Psychoanalysis and the Gothic. Basingston: Macmillan Press. ISBN 978-1-349-26840-5. Dracula is also said to be a "folio novel — which is ... a sibling to the epistolary novel, posed as letters collected and found by the reader or an editor." Alexander Chee, "When Horror Is the Truth-teller", Guernica, October 2, 2023 Many figures have been suggested as inspirations for Count Dracula, but there is no consensus. In his 1962 biography of Stoker, Harry Ludlam suggested that Ármin Vámbéry, a professor at the University of Budapest, supplied Stoker with information about Vlad Drăculea, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler. [9] Professors Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu popularised the idea in their 1972 book, In Search of Dracula. [10] Benjamin H. LeBlanc writes that there is a reference within the text to Vámbéry, an "Arminius, of Buda-Pesh University", who is familiar with the historical Vlad III and is a friend of Abraham Van Helsing, [11] but an investigation by McNally and Florescu found nothing about "Vlad, Dracula, or vampires" within Vámbéry's published papers, [12] nor in Stoker's notes about his meeting with Vámbéry. [11] Academic and Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller calls the link to Vlad III "tenuous", indicating that Stoker incorporated a large amount of "insignificant detail" from his research, and rhetorically asking why he would omit Vlad III's infamous cruelty. [13] [c]

Kuzmanovic, Dejan (2009). "Vampiric Seduction and Vicissitudes of Masculine Identity in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" ". Victorian Literature and Culture. 37 (2): 411–425. doi: 10.1017/S1060150309090263. ISSN 1060-1503. JSTOR 40347238. S2CID 54921027. The first film to feature Count Dracula was Károly Lajthay's Drakula halála ( transl. The Death of Dracula), a Hungarian silent film which allegedly premiered in 1921, though this release date has been questioned by some scholars. [132] Very little of the film has survived, and David J. Skal notes that the cover artist for the 1926 Hungarian edition of the novel was more influenced by the second adaptation of Dracula, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu. [133] Critic Wayne E. Hensley writes that the narrative of Nosferatu differs significantly from the novel, but that characters have clear counterparts. [134] Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, initiated legal action against the studio behind Nosferatu, Prana. The legal case lasted two or three years, [p] and in May 1924, Prana agreed to destroy all copies of the film. [136] [q] Christopher Lee as the title character in Dracula (1958) Poenari Castle teeters on a clifftop above the canyon carrying the Transfăgărășan highway. Vlad repaired the castle and lived there for some years. It's a crumbling ruin, even more so after 20th century earthquakes, you come for the views and the fun of lumping up 1480 steps. Dracula, Gothic novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897, that was the most popular literary work derived from vampire legends and became the basis for an entire genre of literature and film. Summary

Read about the related theme of social change in nineteenth-century Russia in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The Threat of Female Sexual Expression Keogh, Calvin W. (2014). "The Critics' Count: Revisions of Dracula and the Postcolonial Irish Gothic". Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry. 1 (2): 189–206. doi: 10.1017/pli.2014.8. ISSN 2052-2614. S2CID 193067115. Senf, Carol A. (1982). " "Dracula": Stoker's Response to the New Woman". Victorian Studies. 26 (1): 33–49. ISSN 0042-5222. JSTOR 3827492.

Raymond McNally's Dracula Was A Woman (1983) suggests another historical figure as an inspiration: Elizabeth Báthory. [16] McNally argues that the imagery of Dracula has analogues in Báthory's described crimes, such as the use of a cage resembling an iron maiden. [17] Gothic critic and lecturer Marie Mulvey-Roberts writes that vampires were traditionally depicted as "mouldering revenants, who dragged themselves around graveyards", but—like Báthory—Dracula uses blood to restore his youth. [18] Recent scholarship has questioned whether Báthory's crimes were exaggerated by her political opponents, [19] with others noting that very little is concretely known about her life. [20] A book that Stoker used for research, The Book of Were-Wolves, does have some information on Báthory, but Miller writes that he never took notes on anything from the short section devoted to her. [21] In a facsimile edition of Bram Stoker's original notes for the book, Miller and her co-author Robert Eighteen-Bisang say in a footnote that there is no evidence she inspired Stoker. [22] In 2000, Miller's book-length study, Dracula: Sense and Nonsense, was said by academic Noel Chevalier to correct "not only leading Dracula scholars, but non-specialists and popular film and television documentaries". [23] [d] Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. An epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, investigate, hunt and kill Dracula. Dracula is ultimately a novel about the battle between the forces of good and evil. It has a traditional structure, beginning with exposition, climaxing midway through, and ending with a resolution of good conquering evil. Plot points in Dracula Placing the branch of a wild rose upon the top of his coffin will render him unable to escape it; a sacred bullet fired into the coffin could kill him so that he remain true-dead. [28]Dracula is very proud of his warrior heritage, proclaiming his pride to Harker on how the Székely people are infused with the blood of heroes. He also expresses an interest in the history of the British Empire, speaking admiringly of its people. He has a somewhat primal and predatory worldview, pities ordinary humans for their revulsion to their darker impulses, feels human emotions and often says that he can love. [25]

Dearden, Lizzie (20 May 2014). "Radu Florescu dead: Legacy of the Romanian 'Dracula professor' ". The Independent. Archived from the original on 12 January 2021. In "Dracula's Guest", the narrative follows an unnamed Englishman traveller as he wanders around Munich before leaving for Transylvania. It is Walpurgis Night and the young Englishman foolishly leaves his hotel, in spite of the coachman's warnings, and wanders through a dense forest alone. Along the way, he feels that he is being watched by a tall and thin stranger.There is no moral Conflict in Van Helsing’s speech, encapsulating the strong divide between good and evil in the novel. Van Helsing knows he is right because he is good and Dracula is evil, underpinned by his language of absolutes. Sexuality Stoker, Bram. "Ch 19, Jonathan Harker's Journal". Dracula (PDF). p.358. and when I had seen him he was either in the fasting stage of his existence in his rooms or, when he was bloated with fresh blood, Count Dracula appears in Mad Monster Party? voiced by Allen Swift. This version is shown to be wearing a monocle. Count Dracula is among the monsters that Baron Boris von Frankenstein invites to the Isle of Evil to show off the secret of total destruction and announce his retirement from the Worldwide Organization of Monsters. Tomaszweska, Monika (2004). "Vampirism and the Degeneration of the Imperial Race: Stoker's Dracula as the Invasive Degenerate Other" (PDF). Journal of Dracula Studies. 6. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 November 2020. Cazacu, Matei (2017). "Dracula and Bram Stoker". In Reinert, Stephen W. (ed.). Dracula. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers. p.248. ISBN 978-9004349216.