Fangs for the Memories
Dracula turns 100
A century ago, a Dublin-born theater manager named Abraham Stoker published in London a 6-shilling novel called Dracula. Bram Stoker's 10 other novels--the supermarket paperbacks of their day--have been largely forgotten, but the tale of the tragic, terrifying count still lurks in the collective consciousness.
Vampires first appeared in English literature via an 1819 novella partly inspired by Greek folk legends. But Stoker added now-familiar twists: His undead leave no mirror reflection, they shun garlic, and they can be killed only by a stake through the heart. Moreover, he placed them in Transylvania, home to Vlad the Impaler, the brutal 15th-century ruler regarded by many as the count's real-life role model.
Stoker's book sold respectably on release, helped no doubt by its un-Victorian eroticism. But interest in the novel really picked up after the first vampire film, 1922's Nosferatu. In recent years, Dracula's popularity has even spawned an academic cottage industry. This August, scholars will mix with vampire buffs at "Dracula '97: A Centennial Celebration," a four-day conference in Los Angeles. The endurance of Stoker's work does not surprise conference organizer Elizabeth Miller, who notes: "It's hard to keep an old vampire down."
FILM BITES Leonard Wolf, author of Dracula: The Connoisseur's Guide (Broadway Books, $16), picks his favorite Dracula films: Dracula's Daughter (1936). She tries to escape the family curse. Nosferatu (1922). F. W. Murnau's silent classic, whose "dreamlike quality has never been surpassed." Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966). John Carradine spoofs earlier Draculas in a funky Wild West version.
This story appears in the August 4, 1997 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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