Dracula

[chongjasmine]

Anyone love this classic by bram stoker? I like it a lot.

 

[Harpo]

Here are a couple of old threads about it

Dracula: Bram Stoker

It is possibly heresy to state so, but I found Bram Stoker's Dracula to be a dull and lifeless work. The first few chapters while Jonathan Harker is trapped in Dracula's castle is very good - but that part of the story quickly ends. And then the rest of the book is seemingly Van Helsing...

www.sffchronicles.com

Dracula!

I just started reading Dracula (Bram Stoker) a few days ago and so far it is really good. And it is very different than anything I've read before. I mean I've read books that are written in diary form but this is the first one where it is actually very good in keeping the suspense and...

www.sffchronicles.com

 

[BAYLOR]

Anyone love this classic by bram stoker? I like it a lot.

A great book and a classic.

 

[Guttersnipe]

I was supposed to read it for my high school Horror class, but never finished it. I'll have to revisit this as well as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I liked what I read, but I was preoccupied with other things back then.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I would think that for most people picking up Bram Stoker's novel for the first time, it would not be the story that they would expect it to be. Same goes for Frankenstein. The movies based on the books I think have had far too much influence for far too long for anyone to think that either Frankenstein or Dracula would be anything but outright horror.

 

[BAYLOR]

I would think that for most people picking up Bram Stoker's novel for the first time, it would not be the story that they would expect it to be. Same goes for Frankenstein. The movies based on the books I think have had far too much influence for far too long for anyone to think that either Frankenstein or Dracula would be anything but outright horror.

When Dracula first came out and was new, it was a shocker . A number of the movies that came out over the years tried, with varying degrees of success , to be as faithful as possible to Stoker’s novel.

I like quite a number of these films . The best and most interesting version and most under appreciated , is the 1977 BBC version with Louis Jourdan in the lead role .

Louis Jourdan was a terrific and very versatile actor. I liked his take on Dracula.

 

[the_last_saxon]

I like it - but I didn't as a teenager. But I read it again a few years ago, and quiet enjoyed it.

 

[Elentarri]

You should also try Powers of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula
by Valdimar Ásmundsson (Adaptation), Bram Stoker, & Hans Corneel De Roos (Translation).

Powers of Darkness

Powers of Darkness is an incredible literary discovery: In 1900, Icelandic publisher and writer Valdimar Ásmundsson set out to translate Bram Stoker’s world-famous 1897 novel Dracula. Called Makt Myrkranna (literally, “Powers of Darkness”), this Icelandic edition included an original preface written by Stoker himself. Makt Myrkranna was published in Iceland in 1901 but remained undiscovered outside of the country until 1986, when Dracula scholarship was astonished by the discovery of Stoker’s preface to the book. However, no one looked beyond the preface and deeper into Ásmundsson’s story.

In 2014, literary researcher Hans de Roos dove into the full text of Makt Myrkranna, only to discover that Ásmundsson hadn’t merely translated Dracula but had penned an entirely new version of the story, with all new characters and a totally re-worked plot. The resulting narrative is one that is shorter, punchier, more erotic, and perhaps even more suspenseful than Stoker’s Dracula. Incredibly, Makt Myrkranna has never been translated or even read outside of Iceland until now.

Powers of Darkness presents the first ever translation into English of Stoker and Ásmundsson’s Makt Myrkranna. With marginal annotations by de Roos providing readers with fascinating historical, cultural, and literary context; a foreword by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew and bestselling author; and an afterword by Dracula scholar John Edgar Browning, Powers of Darkness will amaze and entertain legions of fans of Gothic literature, horror, and vampire fiction.

 

[Extollager]

I wrote a paper for a fanzine years ago suggesting there were interesting parallels between Stoker's novel and elements of The Fellowship of the Ring.

 

[paeng]

I used it for a gothic lit class once but couldn't say much by way of characterization and philosophical themes, at least in contrast to works like Frankenstein and even several of Hawthorne's stories, but it's enjoyable.

 

[Randy M.]

Maybe not philosophical depth, but it's wide open for Freudian interpretation, and as an example of English wariness of the non-English at that time, maybe especially of Eastern Europeans.

 

[Le Panda du Mal]

I liked it but for vampire fiction I found Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla much more compelling (and a lot shorter!) As far as gothic horror novels Lewis' The Monk and Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer are also amazing.

 

[Rodders]

I'm rather embarrassed to say that I've not read either Dracula or Frankenstein.

Perhaps a reading goal for 2023.

 

[BAYLOR]

I liked it but for vampire fiction I found Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla much more compelling (and a lot shorter!) As far as gothic horror novels Lewis' The Monk and Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer are also amazing.

Camilla is very good So are the Monk and Melmouth .

Hammer pictures did a films did kind of adaptation of Camilla in the early 70's , I think . And there is recent film adaptation of the Monk .

If you like those , you might want to check out Vathek by William Beckford .

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm rather embarrassed to say that I've not read either Dracula or Frankenstein.

Perhaps a reading goal for 2023.

Both well worth the read.

 

[KiraAnn]

I liked the original novel. After the copyright ran out in the early 70's there were several knockoff "sequels".

 

[KGeo777]

I am in the Fan Frankenstein camp but I am intrigued about the rival book the Beetle(?) that was said to be more popular than Dracula when it came out.
I wonder what made the Beetle more popular at the time. Was it distribution and marketing or some other factor.

 

[Ned Ryerson]

The Dracula of the book was pretty nondescript as a character, I thought. It's other people's interpretations that made him colourful.

 

[nickamano]

Having written (and published) my own Dracula Trilogy earlier this year, going through the text line by line for purposes of adaptation revealed a lot of information that people get wrong about the Dracula story, mostly through their exposure to the less than accurate film and television adaptions. It was a fun an exhilarating (not so little) project.