# "Dracula" by Bram Stoker– when it was new **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [October 25, 2026, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136 "2026-10-25T02:22:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2026, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/1 "2026-10-25T02:22:40Z")
Today we are so immersed in the tropes of vampires and Dracula in particular that it colors everything that one might take away from the original novel. For example afaik “Victorian” horror is something we only see in hindsight from a later era; back then it was just the modern day. So what was Stoker actually aiming at when he wrote the novel, and how did contemporary audiences receive it? ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2026, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/2 "2026-10-25T02:52:07Z")
Stoker was little late to the game. I just listened to a podcast that discusses the origins of the seductive vampire with early 19th Century Gothic literature and how it was largely modeled on the personality of Lord Byron. [Medieval Origins of Dracula - After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal | Acast](https://shows.acast.com/64e89a796854bf00115a70e0/episodes/medieval-origins-of-dracula)? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2026, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/3 "2026-10-25T04:15:34Z")
Dracula is a timeless, ancient monster that horrifies today as well as when the book was new. Harker, notably by contrast, brought in sci-fi tech like typewriters, phonograph recordings, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2026, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/4 "2026-10-25T13:07:10Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > and how did contemporary audiences receive it? Contemporary reviewers liked it; it sold moderately well but wasn’t a blockbuster. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2026, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/5 "2026-10-25T13:39:02Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Dracula is a timeless, ancient monster that horrifies today as well as when the book was new. > > Harker, notably by contrast, brought in sci-fi tech like typewriters, phonograph recordings, etc. That’s kind of what I was wondering: if it was supposed to be clash of “science vs. magic”. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2026, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/6 "2026-10-25T14:35:06Z")
If I recall correctly, it was more notable for its storytelling technique than the titular character. The story was told through journal entries and newspaper clippings instead of a straightforward narrative. It was a bit like watching the shadow on the wall of one person strangling another, instead of watching the act directly, and was a bit creepier for it. It was kind of the Blair Witch Project of its day. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2026, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/7 "2026-10-25T14:39:33Z")
Here’s a collection of contemporaneous reviews from various outlets. Interesting reading; it’s mostly positive, but there are some dislikers. [Contemporary Reviews Of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – The Bela Lugosi Blog](https://beladraculalugosi.wordpress.com/contemporary-reviews-of-bram-stokers-dracula/) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/8 "2026-10-26T11:40:33Z")
Stoker is the one who codified vampire lore. Before he wrote his book, there was a loose collection of beliefs about vampires, and a few tropes, but Stoker turned them into damned-near iron-clad RULES. Carmilla may have slept in a blood-filled coffin, but Stoker made it mandatory that the vampire sleep in a coffin. In his native soil, no less. Vampires were Creatures of the Night before, but it wasn’t exactly clear why. Varney the Vampire, it turned out, could be killed, but the touch of moonlight revived him (something I don’t recall applying t any other vampire) Jules Verne, in _Carpathian Castle_ (1892) told us that there were vampires in Transylvania (something e undoubtedly garnered from Emily Gerard’s _The Land Beyond the Forest_ (1888)), but it was Stoker who really cemented the identification of Transylvania with vampires. Vampires had been “titled” ever since Polidori’s Lord Ruthven (undoubtedly based on Lord Byron) and Byron’s own un-named character from his unfinished story, and both Varney and Carmilla were titled aristocrats, but Stoker’s creation really nailed the association. The bit about Vampires not being visible in mirrors is Stoker’s own creation – nothing like it exists in vampire fiction or folklore before; It makes a sort of superficial sense – if the mirror reflects the soul, and vampires don’t have a soul, then you could believe that they don’t have reflections. But this feature has looked increasingly silly in movies. I don’t recall any previous vampires being repelled by garlic or by wolfbane - it might be in old folkloire, but it doesn’t stand out in my mind. But Stoker emphasized it. I don’t recall it being an element of vampire folklore that vampires couldn’t cross moving water, although that’s a bit of folklore about evil spirits. Stoker applied it to Drcula so that he could circumvent it – if vampires couldn’t themselves cross moving water, they could _get someone else to carry them across_. So you have the voyage of the _Demeter_ in _Dracula._. (In fact, in the first Dracula play, Dracul is brought from Transylvania to England in an airplane in a single night!) A lot of the idea behind the novel _Dracula_ is the idea of Superstition and Technology/Science, but in an unusual way. Dracula cleverly makes use of modern advances to eliminate classic restrictions against monsters. Can’t cross moving water? Get someone le to carry you across! Have to sleep in your native ground? don’t let that restrict you – bring your native ground with you Have to sleep through the day? Have your well-paid stooges do things for you, move stuff around, and guard your safe houses You’ve exhausted all the easy pickings in your vicinity, and the peasants know too much about keeping you away? Hire a travel agent to find you a new home where they don’t know about you yet. I won’t go into Vampires and Daylight – a complex subject – more than to observe that it wasn’t part of Stoker’s vampiric fakelore. It was first introduced through the movie _Nosferatu_, but really caught on only in the early 1940s, during WWII. I’ve written about this elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/9 "2026-10-26T12:49:45Z")
The “stake through the heart” killing method has persisted, despite the fact that, after chasing him back to Transylvania, they merely cut his head off with a hunting knife, iirc. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/10 "2026-10-26T13:09:49Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I don’t recall any previous vampires being repelled by garlic or by wolfbane - it might be in old folkloire, but it doesn’t stand out in my mind. Years back when I was researching this for some reason, I learned that this goes back to general folklore of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and parts of the Mediterranean that garlic repels evil spirits or the evil eye. So I assume it comes from those traditions. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/11 "2026-10-26T13:12:51Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > The “stake through the heart” killing method has persisted, despite the fact that, after chasing him back to Transylvania, they merely cut his head off with a hunting knife, iirc. “Stake through the heart” is pretty traditional. The Master did a column on it way back. And in _Varney the Vampire_ the frightened townspeople dig up a (n on-vampire) corpse and drive a stake through its heart in an effort to stop the vampire kills. Carmilla is dispatched with a stake through the heart, as well. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/12 "2026-10-26T13:41:32Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > The “stake through the heart” killing method has persisted, despite the fact that, after chasing him back to Transylvania, they merely cut his head off with a hunting knife, iirc. That’s true; he is also stabbed through the heart with a Bowie knife at the same moment. As I’ve observed before, we see a total of five vampires killed in the novel (Lucy, the three vampire brides, and Dracula himself). The only thing all five killings have in common is the severed head. My belief is that it’s that, not the stake through the heart, that’s fatal to vampires. As far as the original question, _Dracula_ is filled with what was then modern technology: Seward’s phonograph, telegraphic communication, cross-continental travel by train, blood transfusions, treatment of the mentally ill as a medical specialty. It strikes me that Stoker was setting up a deliberate contrast between “modern” London and the more “medieval” atmosphere of Transylvania. Dracula was an invader, something from the old world of superstition that didn’t belong in the up-to-date, scientific world of Victorian Britain. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/13 "2026-10-26T14:12:10Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > It strikes me that Stoker was setting up a deliberate contrast between “modern” London and the more “medieval” atmosphere of Transylvania. Dracula was an invader, something from the old world of superstition that didn’t belong in the up-to-date, scientific world of Victorian Britain. He was. “Dracula” is the first epistolary novel I’m aware of that featured transcriptions from recorded cyclinders. But Stoker was doing something else. In contrasting “old” with “new” his vampire was not strictly an agent of “old” – he used new technology to extend his reach and overcome obstacles – the use of a land agent to obtain his new home (and his ability to pay with modern money transactions), his use of paid labor to move his coffins filled with native earth, his hiring a ship to carry him over the water he could not cross. even (in the play) the use of an airplane to cross vast distances. His opponents fought back with blood transfusions and the like, but Dracula was as much a novel about a clever ancient demon overcoming traditional limitations through cleverness and technology. And to do that, he had to show what the "Rules where before showing how Dracula overcame them. THAT’S why he needed to codify the properties and limitations of the vampire, which hadn’t really been done before him. He also ignored or left out things irrelevant to his story. Dracula wasn’t obsessive-compulsive like traditional vampires. He wasn’t a suicide, or buried at a crossroads. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/14 "2026-10-26T14:26:05Z")
CMIIW, but even though Van Helsing listed Drac’s superpowers, the only one he ever used was turning into a wolf. That, and climbing down a wall upside down. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/15 "2026-10-26T15:52:03Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > his hiring a ship to carry him over the water he could not cross. even (in the play) the use of an airplane to cross vast distances. I wonder if modern Victorian city dwellers somehow felt immune from the supernatural as long as they steered clear of haunted houses and the backwaters of civilization. For the first time, it was logistically feasible for those horrors to come to your front door. I also wonder how much the media excitement around Jack the Ripper a few years earlier primed the pump for Dracula as a “modern” threat. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/16 "2026-10-26T16:53:30Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > I also wonder how much the media excitement around Jack the Ripper a few years earlier primed the pump for Dracula as a “modern” threat. There were a few “modern” horrors around that time. Not only _Dracula_ (1897), but also _Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde_ (1886) and _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ (1890). There’s more than a bit of connection between those last two, and all three are about apparently “safe” individuals coming into society and wreaking unexpected damage, aided by fantastic means. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-by-bram-stoker-when-it-was-new/1034136/17 "2026-10-26T18:02:21Z")
A few nitpicks: - We never actually see Dracula in a _coffin_; in the scenes in question he’s in a packing crate with the requisite earth. - I don’t recall him turning into a wolf; in one scene a wolf from a zoo obeys his command to escape and break the threshold of the safehouse, allowing him entry. A mysterious “black dog” leaves the _Demeter_ upon its arrival and an “enormous bat” flutters outside the house. - In the novel garlic **blossoms** are what serve as the repellant. - Van Helsing speculates that Dracula may in fact have been a sorcerer, a graduate of the legendary Scolomance, said to be a secret college with lessons in magic taught by Satan himself. So its unclear how much of what Dracula does is because he’s a vampire and how much because he knows black magic (or if being a vampire is black magic).