Product Description

First published in 1897, this is the original story of "Dracula" which has spawned numerous books and films. The music is from the "golden age" of 1940s horror movies (Skinner and Salter from "House of Frankenstein"), combined with a new "Dracula" ballet score (by Feeney) and various sound effects.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #181229 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-30
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook, Box set, Compilation
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 3
• Dimensions: .44 pounds
• Binding: Audio CD

Carol A. Senf, Georgia Institute of Technology
"Byron has done a superb job of collecting just the right supplementary materials to accompany the novel."

Margaret L. Carter, Bradley University
"…valuable for both research and classroom use…All Dracula scholars will want to own this useful, very reasonably-priced text."

Elizabeth Miller, Memorial University
"Byron’s succinct yet comprehensive introduction provides a useful overview of critical responses to Stoker’s text."

Customer Reviews

The most atmospheric book I have ever read
After being a fan of the now rather hammy looking Hammer Horror Dracula films in my youth I finally decided to buy the original novel and, to be honest, was startled at its brilliance.
It is dark, brooding and powerfully atmospheric - more so than any horror novel I have ever encountered. In its genre it is rightly regarded as one of the premiere pieces of literature of all time.
I would certainly rank it along with greats like Wuthering Heights and Sense and Sensibility as one of the most outstanding reads in British history.
Everyone is familiar with the legend, but Stoker's original is so interesting in that it is written solely in the form of personal journals and press reports, rather than describing the actions as they happen.
Things start piecing themselves together gradually as readers can compare one piece of evidence from Dr Seward with the events of Mina Harker's life and the sad diary of Lucy Westenra.
This allows the reader to get closer than is usual to the characters, an environment that is truly gripping from beginning to end.
Quite simply it is a book that everyone should own and at this price it is an absolute steal.

Dracula - restricted diet (no vegetables please)
Most weekends when we were teenagers, my friend and I took the early evening bus (you can tell it was a long time ago because there was a regular and reliable bus service) into the local market town to watch whatever film Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were starring in at the cinema - usually some variation of Dracula. More recently I've enjoyed Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula". It's high time I got round to reading the original book. So now I have and I listened to the audiobook as well. It's a great story: very imaginative, creepy and atmospheric. To my surprise, I enjoyed the book more than any of the films - and I enjoyed the films a lot. Bram Stoker's Dracula story isn't very much like Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" - as good as that film was, and I had imagined that he'd called it "Bram Stoker's Dracula" because he'd followed the original story closely, but nothing of the sort.

The book has aged rather well, I think. The style is unlike any modern book I've read and is written as a series of journals, diary entries, letters, memoranda and newspaper articles, so the reader sees the events from various angles. Great use is made of the modern technology and scientific theories of the time. Dr Seward keeps his diary using a phonograph, Mina and Jonathan Harker use shorthand, Mina transcribes all the diaries on her typewriter and "knits" them into a sensible order. Use is also made of the very peculiar and sometimes dangerous medicine and psychology of the period. Dr Van Helsing is a medical doctor. He performs blood transfusions (blood groups are not an issue it seems) and the blood is pumped straight from the arms of no fewer than 3 men into the body of one anaemic girl. Really, it would be surprising to us if she didn't die - what a stroke of luck if the blood groups all just happened to be compatible. This sort of thing really did happen in the early days of blood transfusions though. She was fortunate to get human blood - dogs, sheep, horses and all sorts were tried experimentally in earlier, real-life cases. Dr Seward is a psychologist and his analysis of his patient, Renfield is pretty strange. But man of medicine, Dr Van Helsing, also dabbles in psychology and his analysis of Dracula is even more peculiar. He concludes that Dracula has a child's brain and this whacky analysis helps them to work out what the old devil's up to and how they can best hunt him. Again, as nutty as this might seem to the modern reader, it worked well enough in a Gothic horror. In any case, readers of horror stories should already have suspended their disbelief in preparation to enjoy the story and I don't think this story will disappoint anyone who enjoys a good horror story.

The audiobook was good too. I thought the actors performed very well and, with the music, they managed to generate a very sinister atmosphere. My only criticism of the audio version is the editing and that's just a small criticism because it must have been difficult to edit this book down to slightly less than 4 hours. Some of the scenes that were missed made a few other scenes that were included, seem puzzling. I listened to the audiobook before reading the book and I found it a bit disjointed until reading the book filled in the gaps for me. Other than that, I think Naxos did a splendid job. I recommend both the book and the audiobook.

Chilling Listening...
The audiobook by Naxos is more like a radio play than a conventional reading of a book by one narrator, but this has been well done, and I found myself absorbed by it. I have been listening to this in my car as I commute and I could feel a slight sense of fear as it got dark and Count Dracula started to make his presence in London felt...
It has been slighty annotated, but not so much as to detract from the story, and I would highly recommend this.