Bram Stoker

By way of a long overdue return to the novels, short stories, essays, journalism, and correspondence of Bram Stoker, this book reconstructs the cultural and political world that gave birth to Dracula.

Best known today as the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker also wrote several other works, including The Jewel of Seven Stars, Lady Athlyne, and The Lair of the White Worm. While he is largely thought of as a Gothic author, he also employs science and technology in his writings. This book examines Stoker's familiarity with scientific discoveries of his day and his blending of science and technology with supernatural subject matter. Stoker, then, emerges as an early writer of science fiction. In addition, this book shows him to be a thoughtful critic of the role of science in society.

With its roots in Romanticism, antiquarianism, and the primacy of the imagination, the Gothic genre originated in the 18th century, flourished in the 19th, and continues to thrive today. This reference work provides an introduction to Gothic literature and its abundant criticism and summarizes contemporary developments and critical opinion in Gothic Studies. The volume includes alphabetically arranged entries for more than 50 Gothic writers from Horace Walpole to Stephen King. Each entry includes a primary bibliography, a critical essay on the author's place in the Gothic tradition, and a selected, annotated bibliography of scholarship. Entries for Russian, Japanese, French, and German writers give an international scope to the book, while the focus on English and American literature shows the dynamic nature of Gothicism today.

Take the papers that are with this, the diaries of Harker and the rest, and read them, and then find the great Un-Dead, and cut off his head and burn his heart or drive a stake through it, so that the world may rest from him. Bram Stoker's classics vampire story has haunted and disturbed the modern imagination for a hundred years. Set in Transylvania, London, and Whitby, it pits the sinister but seductive Count Dracula against a team of Vampire-hunters armed only with typewriters, phonographs, and syringes. They must obstruct his plan to conquer London before the forces of madness and depravity overwhelm them all. Vividly presented in the form of diaries and letters, the narrative blends ancient superstitions with modern technologies, and pulsates with obsessive fears of foreignness and sexuality. Blood, information, and hypnotic energy circulate furiously among the characters until he tale reaches its violent climax. This new edition has an introduction and bibliography which draw on the latest scholarship, and detailed notes which explain literary, geographical, and technological allusions in the novel.