In the following essay, novelist and sociologist Stableford examines the history behind Stoker's novel.
Bram Stoker's Dracula completed the set of three 19th-century horror stories which were to create modern myths in alliance with Hollywood. Like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde it owed its origin to a nightmare, but it took Stoker many years of research and forethought to get himself to the point of beginning an actual draft. Even then he encountered difficulties, eventually dropping the opening sequence that was later published separately as "Dracula's Guest." What remains is untidy, although the presentation of the story as a patchwork of documents helps to sustain the pretence that the untidiness is merely superficial. In fact, it could hardly be more deep-seated; the novel is shot through.....
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