Dracula - Bram Stoker

Dracula

By Bram Stoker

  • Release Date: 2019-08-29
  • Genre: Classics
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 119 Ratings

Description

Dracula is a Gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker, considered to be one of the most enduring and skillful examples of the modern vampire genre. It tells the story of Count Dracula, and of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who attempts to thwart the vampire in his attempt to move from Transylvania to London, in order to find new blood and spread the undead curse. This Essential Classics edition includes a new introduction by Professor Vivian Heller, Ph.D. in literature and modern studies from Yale University.

Bram Stoker was a 19th-century Irish writer best known for Dracula. During his lifetime, Stoker was also the business manager of the Lyceum Theater in London. In order to write Dracula, Stoker spent years researching European folklore and vampire mythology, and the product was the book that would become a classic of horror fiction.

Vivian Heller received her Ph.D. in English Literature and Modern Studies from Yale University. She is author of Joyce, Decadence, and Emancipation(University of Illinois Press) and of The City Beneath Us   (W.W. Norton & Company), a history of the building of the New York City subway system.  She is an associate at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies and is the writing tutor for the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She is also a long-standing member of the non-fiction committee of the PEN Prison-Writing Committee, which awards prizes to inmates from across the country.

Essential Classics publishes the most crucial literary works throughout history, with a unique introduction to each, making them the perfect treasure for any reader’s shelf.

Reviews

  • Outstanding!

    5
    By PB Elder
    New books often keep us from enjoying the old! I could not put this masterpiece down.
  • Definitely worth the read, but I won’t be reading it again.

    3
    By Shortssuck
    Kinda cheesy and wordy. But very atmospheric. Though they were few and far between, the exciting parts (the parts that actually feature Dracula himself) were truly horrifying.
  • Terrible Formatting

    1
    By PirateJ85
    Perfectly fine except for terrible formatting involving caps lock, bold, underline, and strike through on various passages.
  • A classic

    4
    By Half-emrys
    A classic novel that’s very heavy to read. Bram Stoker had an interesting set up for his novel by using journal entries and notes and memos as the form of relaying the story. It’s a bit tedious reading a bunch of different perspectives, and some useless scenes by those with heavy accents. Stoker also relentlessly reuses the same descriptive words over and over again. And takes a long time getting to the point of things. I imagine he thought it was to build suspense. Such as with the long journal entries of all the travel. I did immensely enjoy connecting the popular phrases and scenes with the movie. The movie almost did things better and had a stronger climax. This book does seem to be weak in the moments that should have weight.