Dracula
Bram Stoker (1847–1912), 1897
★ 4.03 from 1.6m ratings on Goodreads
A solicitor's business trip, a seaside storm and a doctor's case notes, told through diaries, letters and telegrams so that dread reads like found evidence. Dread builds slowly through diaries, letters and telegrams, so the horror arrives like evidence you are piecing together yourself.
Feels like dread, unease and curiosity. About death, morality and power.
Who it’s for
You may enjoy this if you like gothic atmosphere assembled from documents and don't mind a Victorian voice. Be warned that the middle stretches can feel slow and repetitive, and some period attitudes toward gender and religion sit uneasily now.
Why read it
Reading it now shows where so much vampire fiction came from, and the shifting narrators keep the unease close and personal.
Pages from the book
Boredom turns to terror when your host leaves by the window.
What I saw was the Count’s head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. What if every morning you closed the books and started again?
How well the man reasoned; lunatics always do within their own scope. I wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. He has closed the account most accurately, and to-day begun a new record. How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives? Nobody can say why a tortoise outlives a dynasty.
“Can you tell me why the tortoise lives more long than generations of men; why the elephant goes on and on till he have seen dynasties; and why the parrot never die only of bite of cat or dog or other complaint? Can you tell me why men believe in all ages and places that there are some few who live on always if they be permit; that there are men and women who cannot die? We all know—because science has vouched for the fact—that there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands of years, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth of the world. What readers say
Readers are split: some find the gothic atmosphere and vampire lore chilling and influential, while others are bored by slow, repetitive pacing and disappointed it is less scary or romantic than expected. The epistolary style and period gender/religious attitudes divide them too.
Bram Stoker.Stoker was Henry Irving's business manager at London's Lyceum Theatre for about 27 years, and wrote Dracula while holding that job.
Books that feel like this
More by Bram Stoker
Dracula's Guest
Bram Stoker, 1914
A posthumous collection of Stoker's uncanny tales: haunted judges, sea rescues, quicksand doubles and one very patient cat. Gothic horror in short, sharp doses.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Dracula for me?
- You may enjoy this if you like gothic atmosphere assembled from documents and don't mind a Victorian voice. Be warned that the middle stretches can feel slow and repetitive, and some period attitudes toward gender and religion sit uneasily now.
- What is Dracula like?
- Dread builds slowly through diaries, letters and telegrams, so the horror arrives like evidence you are piecing together yourself. Feels like dread, unease and curiosity. About death, morality and power.
- What should I read after Dracula?
- If you liked Dracula, try Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) and The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson).
A taste of the feed
A mind wakes up with no history, and nobody to ask.
“But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.
Frankenstein · Mary Shelley
What if the punishment you wanted most was remorse, and it never came.
And if only fate would have sent him repentance—burning repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life. But he did not repent of his crime.
Crime and Punishment · Fyodor Dostoevsky
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