He began his literary career by publishing stories in magazines beginning in 1872. He left civil service in 1878 to become the business manager for Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London. After moving to London, he turned his hand to writing novels while he continued in his position as manager of the Lyceum Theatre. His first full-length novel, The Snake's Pass was published in 1890. Dracula, his second full-length novel, appeared in 1897.

Anyone who has seen any of the many film versions of Bram Stoker's tale of the vampire Count might well imagine that it is a tale of the early nineteenth or even the eighteenth century, but Stoker actually wrote his novel at the end of the nineteenth century as a record of contemporary events, containing references to the contemporary technology of the time. When Jonathan Harker travels to visit the Count at his Transylvanian castle, he takes along his Kodak to make a photographic record of his travels. At one point, the physician attending Miss Lucy Westenra records his thoughts on a phonograph (i.e. Edison's wax cylinders).

At any rate, this is the prototype of all vampire tales, which begins with the journey of Jonathan Harker, an estate agent, to Castle Dracula in Transylvania to finalize a sales contract to transfer title of an estate in suburban London. At Castle Dracula, Jonathan meets the Count and his three female companions; then narrowly escapes becoming the main course and sets off on foot to return to England. Meanwhile the Count himself has begun the transfer of his household to England, traveling aboard a Russian sailing vessel. In England, the lunatic Renfield has been waiting patiently for the arrival of The Master. When the Russian ship drifts into an English port with all hands dead, the horror begins for London and the surrounding townships.

Dracula, volume I by Bram Stoker

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Dracula, volume II by Bram Stoker

Size: 222 KB

And The Movie

There have been many cinematic adaptations of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but one of the most scenically beautiful and haunting of these is Werner Herzog's Nosferatu: The Vampyre (1979). I suppose that the art of the film maker lies in the transfiguration of the text, as I have never seen a literal rendering of any novel on the screen. Herzog's adaptation of Dracula is not an exception, but it is a very effective interpretation of Bram Stoker's story.

Herzog's adaptation moves all of the English action to Holland and takes some liberties in his interpretation of several of the other characters (Lucy which was the name of the best friend of Jonathan's fiance in the novel has become Jonathan's wife in this film; the lunatic Renfield who employed only birds and spiders in the novel has become Jonathan's employer in the film), but the changes are really effective in creating a film that will be hauntingly memorable even to those who have read the book.

Klaus Kinski creates the best interpretation of the Count since Max Schreck while Bruno Ganz' recreation of Jonathan Harker will come back to you in your nightmares. With names like that, you might have guessed that this is a German film with an English overdub that is so good that you wouldn't have known that the actors were actually doing the scenes in German if I hadn't already told you.

Filmed in Holland and the Bavarian Alps, Herzog's Nosferatu combines a haunting musical score with breathtaking scenery of the Bavarian Alps and period interiors from old Amsterdam. The result is the best cinematography and settings to ever appear in any adaptation of the Stoker story.

You can pick up the DVD at Amazon.