A Beginning, of Sorts

It was on this day, 115 years ago, that Bram Stoker's novel DRACULA was published by Archibald Constable and Company in the UK.  It was a little yellow hardcover with the title written in red lettering.  I've posted a picture of my copy below.

The novel -- an epistolary exploration not unlike my STOKER -- challenged numerous conventions typically associated with Victorian culture, including colonialism, post-colonialism, anti-immigration sentiment, imperialism, the objectification of women and habits of the flesh.  As your English teacher probably told you, most everything that happens in the novel has some kind of double meaning.  As your English teacher probably didn't tell you, most of those double meanings don't actually mean anything and aren't really double meanings at all.

The character of Dracula, including his mannerisms and appearance, is believed to have been based on Bram Stoker's friend Sir Henry Irving, an actor who was very famous at the time but you've never heard of in your life; sort of like Matt Damon a hundred years from now.  This is an outright falsehood.  Stoker didn't base the character on Irving.  Irving was never as good-looking as I.

As you are painfully aware, there is a tradition in theater and cinema of adapting, readapting, unadapting and overadapting the story of the vampire and his pursuer, and you have DRACULA to thank for the endurance of the vampire mythology, which has been most recently resurrected in the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp collaboration DARK SHADOWS.

The novel, referred to as horror, a thriller, gothic fiction (a term that is bandied about all too much) and fantasy, is often seen as the first real "invasion" story.  And it is, too.

Just not the kind you'd expect.

Stay thirsty.

-D