Tag Archives: Dracula

Roger Luckhurst, ‘Why bother reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula?’

And again, Roger Luckhurst! This time, a succinct essay on the significance of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, placing it in the context of late nineteenth-century Britain and anxieties over Empire and otherness.

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Before Bram: a timeline of vampire literature

More useful information from Roger Luckhurst on the origins of the vampire. This timeline illustrates the ethnographic and literary precursors of Stoker’s Dracula.

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Roger Luckhurst, ‘The birth of the vampyre: Dracula and mythology in Early Modern Europe’

An extract here from Roger Luckhurst’s excellent introduction to the OUP World’s Classics edition of Dracula. The notion that the vampire is universal and archetypal is debunked, and its origins shown to lie in the Enlightenment response to folkloric panics … Continue reading

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Roger Luckhurst, ‘From Dracula to The Strain: Where do vampires come from?’

A brilliant, concise overview of the origins of contemporary vampire narratives by Prof, Roger Luckhurst of Birkbeck College, London. He traces the vampire story from the Eats European accounts in the eighteenth-century through Polidori, Varney the Vampire, ‘Carmilla’ and (inevitably) … Continue reading

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Dracula’s Transylvania, the Land Beyond the Forest

‘We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England, our ways are not your ways and there shall be to you many strange things’ (Bram Stoker) I was beyond excited to find myself in Transylvania recently, fully expecting a gothic … Continue reading

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Dracula Quiz

The Gothic scholar Roger Lockhurst has set a quiz here to test your knowledge of Dracula. I made s a silly mistake and only got 9/10!

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Vatican Wants Exorcisms for Teens Who Love Vampires

Thanks to Dr Beyer for forwarding the link to The Independent which today claimed that Exorcists Warn Vatican over Beautiful Young Vampires   Perhaps Pope Francis would like to borrow our vampire slaying kit complete with crucifix bible and holy water. … Continue reading

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Barry Forshaw ‘Sex and Death: Vampires from Coleridge to Hammer’

Instructive extract from Barry Forshaw’s British Gothic Cinema on the vampire theme in Gothic fiction from Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ through ‘Carmilla’ and dracula to its incarnation in cinema.

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Call for Articles: Journal of Dracula Studies

Stoker-, Dracula-, and vampire-related articles sought for the Journal of Dracula Studies: We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular … Continue reading

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Review of Mark Bruce’s ‘Dracula’

At the end of November, I treated myself and a friend to a performance of Mark Bruce’s Dracula. It is a sign of the how good the reviews had been that I was willing to trek from South-West London to North-East London to … Continue reading

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