Dracula by Bram Stoker

Britain's greatest masterpieces

- Jack Watkins

IF ever a character acquired a reputation that far outstretched the boundaries of the tale from which they emerged, it is Count Dracula. Bram Stoker's novel of 1897—the same year that COUNTRY LIFE was born—was written up in the form of a series of journal entries, letters, newspaper cuttings, and ships' logs, which, although entirely fictional, aimed to convey an impression of reality.

It does not make for fluid reading Stoker's writing is often flabby and ponderous—but the author succeeded in creating one of those most fascinating villains in the history of the Gothic novel and some of its creepiest passages. The book, widely praised upon first publication, has never been out of print, and Dracula himself, via the book and many stage and screen adaptations, has entered the realms of legend.

It is certainly fair to say that the early scenes involving Jonathan Harker's coach ride through the spectacular Carpathian landscape to the Count's castle are both scenic and eerie. Atmospheric and sinister, too, are the descriptions in the fictitious newspaper, the Dailygraph of the Whitby coast in North Yorkshire, into which harbour a mysterious schooner 'with all sails set' arrives during an unusually fierce storm, bringing 50 wooden boxes, one of which contains the un-dead (nosferatu) Count.

'Strangest of all,' continues the report, 'the very instant the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck from below, as if shot up by the concussion, and running forward, jumped from the bow on the sand. The creature, obviously Dracula, makes for Whitby churchyard, where he will shortly vampirise the sleepwalking Lucy, his first victim on English soil. The remainder of the book follows the concerted efforts to thwart the bloodsucking Count, his coterie of hunters including the intrepid vampire-slayer Prof Abraham Van Helsing, which leads to a dramatic climax back in Transylvania.