Dracula — The Original 1897 Text (eBook)

The book behind a century of vampires, restored to what Bram Stoker actually published in 1897.

Dracula is a novel made entirely of paper: 118 documents — shorthand journals, a diary spoken into a phonograph, letters, telegrams, a ship's log, newspaper cuttings — and a Count who never writes a line of it himself. This edition prints the complete original 1897 text, cross-checked against the first edition on the record of its own documents: who writes, when, and what no single character ever knows.

Inside: an introduction telling the story of Stoker's seven years of notes, the Whitby summer, and the name he found in a library book — with the honest scholarly caution about Vlad the Impaler; a Who's Who of every major character; five explainers (how to read an epistolary novel; the vampires before Dracula — Polidori, Varney, Carmilla; the real geography of Transylvania and Whitby; the technology of 1897; the New Woman and Mina's typewriter); a short life of Bram Stoker; an honest note on the period text; an appendix mapping all 118 documents with their dates; and discussion questions for every chapter plus a whole-book set.

The novel's text is public domain (Stoker died in 1912). All companion material is original to this edition. Print editions follow on Amazon; a printable Book Club Kit is available in this store.