Yeah, as a thriller or horror novel, Frankenstein sucks ass. That’s the difference between 1818 and 1897, I guess.
Frankenstein is widely considered the first horror novel. You would expect writers would get better at it over time, having previous writers to learn from.
Yeah, “Dracula” stands up as a hell of good thriller.
Partly because Stoker wasn’t afraid to sex it up.
Speaking of sexing it up, here’s the great Kate Beaton’s comix take on Dracula.
Best line: “I would like to go to university.”
I am not a fan of the writing style. If your story is letters back and forth detailing full conversations and actions, just write the damn conversations and actions. I keep thinking, “man, this is a really wordy letter.” I’m pushing myself through it.
Still, it is better than Frankenstein.
Yeah, I understand. My son couldn’t make it halfway through The War of the Worlds because he couldn’t take Wells’s 1897 prose.
I majored in European late Romantic Decadant literature, so this sort of shit is just my cup of tea. For me, epistolary novels rock. But it’s not for everyone.
The epistolary novel was by that time a long-established tradition, going back to the 18th Century.
Or earlier.
Oh, Paul the Apostle
Possessed an Epistle
So truly colossal
It made the girls whistle!
– Handelsman
I was wondering if it was connected to the writing style of the period.
I found Dracula far more tedious to read than Frankenstein.
Mixed metaphors and all 
Love… Everlasting.
I got bored as hell with the ever-long break in the action in the dude’s basement and his obsession with digging a tunnel to London. I did like the river battle with the gunboat and the tripod.
Marie de France’s Bisclavret (12th century) was cursed, not by choice.
So hardly radical but not a “sellout.” Religion wasn’t even as highly predictive of polarization then, many Protestants were supportive of rebellions, though it was a relatively quiet time during his lifetime.
Actually, The Castle of Otranto and The Monk came before Mrs. Shelley’s piece of dreck. And some of Ann Radcliffe’s novels may qualify. Personally, I read part of one her novels for a college course, and I’ll never touch her work again.
Actually, as David J. Skal has argued in his many books on The Count, there ain’t no love in Dracula – he’s a predator who cares nothing for others. The whole “romantic” vibe that saturates adaptations of his work comes from the adapters and the actors (although the situation undoubtedly inspires it.) But you won’t find any love (or a re-incarnated wife) in stoker’s original novel.
I’m probably conflating later works with the original novel, but I remember Dracula having some dialogue along the lines of wanting to move to London because it was the heart of the greatest empire in the world and the heart of global commerce (pun very much intended). The implication at least, if it wasn’t outright stated, was that Dracula was tired of preying on cringing peasants in a remote backwater. London offered him a veritable buffet of prey from around the world. And, he was an ambitious medieval warlord. Again, there was an implication, if it was not stated outright, that he had designs on the British throne.
Am I remembering any of that correctly as being in the original novel, or was all of that from later adaptations?
I read it about 3 years ago and my impression was that he was looking for a new hunting ground and London was growing with a large transient population of anonymous lower class workers. They’d be easy prey and no one would miss them. This was an alternative to his minions to going further afield for human food among a fearful Transylvanian population.
I’m trying to recall if there was anything explicit in the text or I just made that up though.
Of course, aside from that author being a Brit, that doesn’t answer the question of why London? Especially given that crossing the ocean would have been fraught with danger for him.
That’s the main thing the struck me as silly about the whole plan, even if you’re a vampire, when your ship sinks in 200ft of water and you’re nailed in a coffin in the cargo hold you’re screwed. Big cities like Paris or Berlin would make way more sense.
Have you read Patrick O’Brian?
Refreshing my memory thanks to Project Gutenberg, the most Dracula has to say about his reasons for moving is in conversation with Jonathan Harker, in Chapter Two:
A few sentences later, he also talks about wanting to learn to speak English perfectly, so that he can blend in once he gets to London, and no one will recognize him as a stranger. The mention of London’s “crowded streets” and “sharing its life” does suggest that he is largely interested in a new hunting ground, and he wants to be as inconspicuous there as he possibly can.
There’s also some talk about how as a boyar (a nobleman), he is accustomed to being master of others. I don’t know if that translates to actual designs on the monarchy or not, but he certainly sees himself as superior to the people he will be preying on.