When Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was published in 1897, the critics were intrigued, if a little taken aback by the mordantly powerful nature of this sinister tale of a vampiric count. “It is, however, an artistic mistake to fill a whole volume with horrors,” noted the Manchester Guardian. “A touch of the mysterious, the terrible, or the supernatural is infinitely more effective and credible.”
‘Less is more’ may well be a good maxim for writers, but a “whole volume of horrors” never did Stoker’s novel of Gothic terror any harm. For a book that has never been out of print since it first hit shelves, it seems apt that a story about the undead should remain eternal, sparking appeal for each new generation. Second only to the character of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula has been re-animated for the screen more than 200 times.
Told in epistolary form, Stoker’s tale of Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman who feasts on the blood of others and meets his demise in the English seaside town of Whitby, hit a nerve. “Stoker’s myth is powerful because it allows evil to remain mysterious,” wrote critic A.N. Wilson. And yet it’s so much more than that: a book that, in late 19th-century England, touched on fears of immigration, sexual promiscuity and moral degeneration.
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