Product Details
Dracula (Vintage Classics)

Dracula (Vintage Classics)
By Bram Stoker

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Product Description

Collected inside this book are diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings that piece together the depraved story of the ultimate predator. A young lawyer on an assignment finds himself imprisoned in a Transylvanian castle by his mysterious host. Back at home his fiancee and friends are menaced by a malevolent force which seems intent on imposing suffering and destruction. Can the devil really have arrived on England's shores? And what is it that he hungers for so desperately?


Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #6021 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-10-04
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 432 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Abraham Stoker was born in Dublin on 8 November 1847. He graduated in Mathematics from Trinity College, Dublin in 1867 and then worked as a civil servant. In 1878 he married Florence Balcombe. He later moved to London and became business manager of his friend Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre. He wrote several sensational novels including novels The Snake's Pass (1890), Dracula (1897), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). Bram Stoker died on 20 April 1912.


Customer Reviews

"For the dead travel fast"5
Surprisingly "Denn die Toten reiten schnell" or "For the dead travel fast" is more than an opening line to this tale of love in the dangerous moon light. After watching several Drac movies and a few Nosferatu's, I pretty much though I had a handle on the genera. Little did I know what a wonderful world of mystery and suspense that Bram Stoker opened up for me.

The story is told mostly third party though the papers, diaries, and phonograph recordings (on wax calendars) of those people involve in a tale so bizarre that it almost defies belief. The general story line is that of a Count that plans to move to a more urban setting (from Borgo Pass to London) where there is a richer diet. There he finds succulent women; something he can sing his teeth in. Unfortunately for him a gang of ruffians (including a real-estate agent, asylum director, Texas cowboy and an Old Dutch abnormal psychologist) is out to detour his nocturnal munching. They think they have Drac on the run but with a wing and a prayer he is always one step ahead.

Of more value to the reader is the rich prose chosen by Stoker as he describes the morals and technology of the time. We have to come to grips with or decide if we can perform the rituals that are required to eliminate vampires verses the impropriety of opening graves and staking loved ones. The powers in the book differ from the movie versions in that they are more of persuasion and capabilities to manipulate the local weather. At one point the Dutch Dr. Van Helsing, is so overwhelmed by a beautiful vampire laying in the grave that he almost for gets why he is there and may become vamp chow.

All in all the story is more in the cunning chase. And the question as to will they succeed or will Dracula triumph. Remember "For the dead travel fast."

"This night our feet must tread in thorny paths or later and forever the feet you love must walk in flame."4
Written in 1897, Stoker's Dracula is a classic of British fiction, fascinating for its subject matter and still the subject of films a hundred years later. Count Dracula, the epitome of evil, is exotic enough to keep even the most jaded reader of his exploits interested in their outcome, and grounded enough in the reality of evil to make even doubters wonder whether evil can be transmitted from one person to another against one's will.

The novel begins with the arrival of Jonathan Harker, a lawyer representing a London real estate agency, at the Transylvanian castle of Count Dracula to clinch the deal by which the count will move to a British estate. Details about Harker's arrival by coach, his greeting at the castle, which has no doors except the front door, his reception by the count (who has hair on the palms of his hands), and his instructions regarding where he may go or not go within the castle set the tone and establish the mysterious background of the count and a sense of dread regarding the outcome for Harker.

By the time that Harker recovers from a long and mysterious illness and returns home, the count, already in London, has turned Lucy, a lovely ingenue, into a vampire. Dr. Van Helsing, a German expert on vampires hired by her family, saves her several times from what appears to be severe anemia and recommends ringing her room with garlic and making sure that she has crucifixes around her. When Dracula then turns his blood-thirsty attention to Mina, fiancée of Jonathan Harker and friend of the unfortunate Lucy, the scene is set for a showdown regarding Dracula's power vs. the power of goodness and traditional religion.

Stoker takes his story beyond sheer melodrama, eliciting sympathy for the afflicted victims of Dracula while also recreating the religious atmosphere of the period and the beliefs and doubts of average citizens. The novel is far more compelling than I expected, creating suspense at the same time that it develops the character of the count with his supernatural powers. The climax in which the forces of good are ranged against the forces of evil in the shape of the count, whose long history is detailed in the novel, is truly a conflict between traditional religion and evil in the form of Satan personified. Fun to read and surprisingly affecting. Mary Whipple

The Historian
Dracula's Guest and Other Stories (Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural)
Count Dracula [1977] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Take a bite...go on5
Great classic horror written around 1897. I just love the tension throughout the book, u can taste the fear in everyone's hearts that Dracula is lurking behind them. The book must have terrified readers at the time!

The women in the book are extremely annoying-they are portrayed as impossibly perfect little angels. The book is great reading if only for an insight into popular attitudes toward woman, sex, religion, and science at the time.

I really like the way its written as well, lots of different narrators and methods for moving the story forward-letters, newspaper clippings, diaries and ship's log,

For those that don't know the plot, a young lawyer travels to Transylvania on a business trip with a man named Dracula. Over the course of few days he soon comes to realise something's not quite right with Mr. Dracula and he isn't a guest but a prisoner. In England a few month later strange happenings occur and Van Helsing and his motley crew must investigate and hunt down this evil

Ps its very easy to read- hardly struggled with any of the words and understood all of it!