Dracula, Bram Stoker
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Dracula

Author: Bram Stoker

Narrator: Andrew Johnson

Unabridged: 16 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Stream Readers

Published: 12/01/2022

Categories: Fiction


Synopsis

Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian noble, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunt Dracula and, in the end, kill him. Dracula was mostly written in the 1890s. Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes for the novel, drawing extensively from Transylvanian folklore and history. Some scholars have suggested that the character of Dracula was inspired by historical figures like the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler or the countess Elizabeth Báthory, but there is widespread disagreement. Stoker's notes mention neither figure. He found the name Dracula in Whitby's public library while holidaying there, picking it because he thought it meant devil in Romanian. Following its publication, Dracula was positively received by reviewers who pointed to its effective use of horror. In contrast, reviewers who wrote negatively of the novel regarded it as excessively frightening. Comparisons to other works of Gothic fiction were common, including its structural similarity to Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1859). In the past century, Dracula has been situated as a piece of Gothic fiction.

Author Bio

Bram Stoker was born November 8, 1847, in Dublin, Ireland. His father was a civil servant, and his mother was a charity worker and writer. Stoker studied math at Trinity College in Dublin and graduated in 1867, after which he became a civil servant. At this time, he also worked as a freelance journalist, a drama critic, and editor of the Evening Mail. In 1876, he met Sir Henry Irving, a famous actor. Stoker accepted a job as personal secretary to Irving and went to England in 1878. Before he left Ireland, he published his first book, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland. While working for Irving he met an aspiring actress named Florence Balcombe. They married in 1878 and had one son, Noel, who was born in 1879. In England, Stoker also began writing a series of short stories and novels, the first of which was The Snake's Pass. Although best known for Dracula, Stoker wrote eighteen books before he died in 1912.

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