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As the twenty-first century begins, it no longer seems necessary to make a case for Dracula, the horror tale composed by Bram Stoker at the end of the Victorian Era in England. It has received ample recognition as one of the truly great horror stories of Western fiction, it is regularly the subject of academic courses ranging for gothic fiction to modern mythology, and a century after its original publication remains in print in a host of editions, adaptations, and translations. This modest project traces the editions and printings of Dracula in the English language, lists the books and various media (film drama, audio recording, etc.) into which Bram Stoker's account of Dracula has been adapted, tracks the translation of Dracula into the several dozen languages in which it has appeared, and surveys a set of material which has been directly inspired by the text and its vampire star. This list was initially developed from the collection of the author, but would have not been possible without the additional references to the very extensive collections of Robert Eighteen-Bisang, Massimo Introvigne, and Bob and Melinda Hayes (the latter posted on Melinda's extensive website (http://isd.usc.edu/~melindah/Stoker/dracthum.htm). Between them, these four sources contain copies of almost every English-language printing of Dracula, and a great majority of the adaptations and translations.<p>The several forms in which the text of Dracula exists creates a spectrum of problems for any serious student of gothic literature, and that spectrum of problems increases exponentially as soon as the many adaptations of the text, especially the cinematic ones, are introduced into the discussion. Of course, those same problems have been the stimulus that has allowed Dracula and vampire studies to flourish in the last generation. While not in itself solving any of these problems, it is hoped that this guide to the various forms in which Dracula exists will be a useful map for approaching the problems. The development of interest in Dracula in the last generation coupled with the knowledge of the many forms in which it exists has also stimulated collectors. Dracula is now a favorite target of collectors, and the compiler hopes that as a secondary goal, this bibliography will become a helpful tool for fellow collectors as they do their own explorations of the many realms into which Dracula has penetrated.
Approaching DraculaIn approaching the ever-changing appearances of Dracula, one might logically begin with the publication of what was surely intended as the book's first edition by Archibald Constable & Co. at some point in May or June of 1897, the exact date of the book's release, if such a date existed, being unknown. Most Dracula scholars place that date in late May or early June. The Constable edition had a mustard yellow cover sans dust jacket with the title in red. For most books, the publication of its first edition is a firm foundation from which to consider later permutations, not so with Dracula. Dracula exists in two important textual formats that pre-date the first edition, namely the set of extensive notes made by Stoker while he went through the lengthy process of writing his novel, and the typescript that was submitted to Constable from which the typesetting was done. It should be noted that interest in Dracula in the academic community was slight until the early 1970s. The current seeming feeding frenzy around what many considered a horror potboiler began with two historians who made the connection between the name of Stoker's title character and the Medieval Romanian Prince Vlad Dracula. Their search for documents related to Vlad led them to the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia. While there, they made an entirely unexpected discovery, Bram Stoker's notes on Dracula, compiled as he researched and thought through the plot and characters for his novel. These notes had been originally auctioned by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge in 1913. Over the intervening years, knowledge of their location was lost until the Rosenbach acquired them in 1970. At the time of McNally and Florescu's visit, an entry on the Museum's newly acquired item had not yet been placed in the library catalog. Following their visit to Philadelphia, McNally and Florescu went on to write the breakthrough study, In Search of Dracula. The idea that Stoker's Count Dracula was based upon the real historical character Prince Vlad caught the imagination of a generation. Not only did the book become a bestseller, but it stimulated three decades of inquiry by a spectrum of scholars into the origins of Dracula. The contemporary interest in vampires throughout the academic world from nineteenth-century gothic literature to Buffy the Vampire Slayer can be traced to the reaction to this single volume and the discovery of the Stoker notes. Note: in 1997, the Rosenbach Museum organized an exhibit on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Dracula in which they displayed a selection of their Dracula-related material. As part of the celebration, they also published: Bram Stoker's Dracula: Catalog of the Centennial Exhibition at the Rosenbach Museum & Library. Philadelphia: Rosenbach Museum & Library, 1997. pb. Large format. Cover by Maurice Sendak. Limited to 1,000 copies. This pamphlet contained 12 b&w reproductions of pages from the notes. Meanwhile, it also happened that quite independently of McNally and Florescu, another young scholar was also working on Dracula, making his start from the many incarnations of the novel in popular culture through the twentieth century. And like In Search of Dracula, Leonard's Wolf's Dreams of Dracula appeared in 1972. Wolf would go on to compile the first set of scholarly notes on the text which appeared in 1975 as The Annotated Dracula. Still unaware of the notes that lay at rest in Philadelphia, Wolf asked most of the right questions of the text although, without Stoker's notes, in many cases his answers would later prove incorrect. McNally and Florescu would bring out their own annotated text in 1979 as The Essential Dracula. As Dracula scholarship emerged, it also become known that at least one copy of Stoker's final manuscript had survived. In 1984, California bookstore owner and collector John McLaughlin was offered the manuscript by an anonymous seller. He purchased it and then in 2002, placed the manuscript, a typescript of the last draft of the text with handwritten changes, up for auction. McLaughlin had designated a minimum bid, reportedly one million dollars, but instead of the many bids that he and Christie's Auction House had waited for, none appeared. However, when McLaughlin checked in with Christie's, he was informed that the manuscript had been sold under a clause that allowed the sale of items after the auction. While no one bid at auction, someone had paid $941,000 for it later. Although McLaughlin received a substantial sum, it was far less than he had hoped. Stoker's typescript of Dracula is notable for bearing the author's original handwritten title for the work, The Un-Dead. It was probably typed by Stoker in London early in 1897 or in 1896 and is the only surviving full-length manuscript of Dracula. It is an important clue as to the process of the development of the eventually published text. While generally unavailable today for anyone to examine, a rather detailed description of the manuscript was included in the booklet printed by Christie's in anticipation of the auction: Bram Stoker's Dracula: The Original Typed Manuscript. Wednesday 17 April 2002. New York: Christie's 2002. 44 pp. pb. It also posted much of the text from that booklet on its Internet site. The process of publishing the manuscript, was, we now know, accompanied by several important decisions. First, in 1914, after Stoker's death, his widow Florence Stoker claimed that a chapter had been removed from Dracula, presumably to shorten it and bring it into conformity with what the publisher saw as an optimum length for a popular novel. She published that chapter as the title piece of short fiction in a collection of Stoker's short stories under the name, "Dracula's Guest." "Dracula's Guest" makes no mention of Dracula nor does it mention any of the characters in the finished novel, but does have other ties to the novel. After the discovery of Stoker's notes and the republication of "Dracula' Guest" by McNally in 1974 in his own collection A Clutch of Vampires and by McNally and Florescu as part of the text in The Essential Dracula, the place of "Dracula Guest" in the development of Dracula became a hot topic for scholarly discussion. Second, in order to secure the spectrum of rights to Dracula, Stoker created the first adaptation of the text by organizing a dramatic reading of it. Held in May 1897 with the participation of some of the members of Henry Irving's troupe (with whom Stoker worked professionally), the dramatic version of Dracula was hastily thrown together by taking two pre-publication copies of the novel and editing them into a dramatic text. Dialogue from the text was then assigned to those who assumed the role of the various characters. The performance of Dracula: or the Undead occurred only once and the text of the reading put aside until recently rediscovered and used for a centennial rereading and publication in 1997. Third, simultaneously with the publication by Archibald Constable & Co. for the British public, Hutchinson & Co. published an edition for circulation through the British colonies around the world , the so-called Colonial edition. For many years, the few scholars who were even aware of plans to publish a Colonial edition believed that it had never been published. It was not listed in the British Library catalogue (or any other standard reference work where one might believe it would cited if it existed). However, in 2002, Robert Eighteen-Bisang located a copy and has subsequently announced its existence to the world. More importantly, in his paper, "Hutchinson's Colonial Library Edition of Dracula," he has made a compelling case that it may in fact be the true first edition. During the remaining fifteen years of Stoker's life, additional alterations of the text would occur. Stoker lived to see the publication of the first American edition in which several changes, a few of some importance, were introduced. Then in 1901, the first translation of Dracula would occur, into Icelandic interestingly enough, and Stoker would write an "Introduction" for this edition. Finally, that same year, Constable would bring out an abridged edition of Dracula in an inexpensive paperback edition. Stoker would himself work on the abridgment, thus indicating to some extent what he considered the more and less essential parts of the text and storyline. In 1994, Transylvania Press reprinted the 1901 paperback edition, for which both Robert Eighteen-Bisang and historian Raymond T. McNally offered reflections on its significance.
Come one come all Mortals who are willing to stick their neck out for a vampire to feed upon. We will be willing to share our Dark Gift to you mortals if you pass our test.
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