Abstract
This chapter discusses a group of novels that simultaneously cannibalise both Bram Stoker’s biography and his canonical Gothic novel, Dracula (1897), which itself centres on vampiric cannibalism. The contemporary reworkings of Dracula discussed here, which include Tom Holland’s Supping with Panthers (1996), Leslie S. Klinger’s The New Annotated Dracula (2008) and Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt’s Dracula the Un-Dead (2009), appropriate Stoker himself in a refracted version of the vampire story and envision new sources for the original novel (that is, other than the Victorian novelist’s own imagination and research), thereby challenging Stoker’s authorial status. This dual postmodernist cannibalism of the text and the author raises questions about authenticity, authorship, originality and literary influence.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Examples include Raymond Rudorff’s The Dracula Archives (1971), Fred Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape (1975), Simon Hawke’s The Dracula Caper (1988), Marie Kiraly’s Mina: the Dracula Story Continues (1996), James Reese’s The Dracula Dossier (2008) and Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series (1992–).
- 2.
The other, for Sutherland, is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818).
- 3.
The Chronicle, qtd. in The Academy, 52: 1317 (1897: July 31), p. 98.
- 4.
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula : A Reader’s Guide (2009), William Hughes describes three types of contemporary fictions inspired by Dracula : ‘First there is a significant body of works that adopts or adapts Stoker’s vampire (and, on occasions, other characters from Dracula) into narratives that prefigure, parallel or post-date the events of the novel. […] Second, there is a more substantial – more withal, often more subtle – range of fictions that pay effective homage to Dracula either by referencing the novel or its cinematic adaptations, or by making free – and sometimes ironic – use of the vampire conventions established by these. These two categories are bridged by a third form of Dracula-inflected fiction, in which Stoker himself makes an appearance either as a historical character or, on occasions, as a fictionalised vampire hunter or expert on occult matters’ (120).
My focus in this chapter is on the third category outlined by Hughes, although in the works I consider Stoker is neither a vampire hunter nor an expert on occult matters.
- 5.
Chapter 3 shows that Charles Dickens’ biography is used in neo-Victorian fiction. Henry James’ life story is also subjected to similar treatment. See Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author, both published in 2004.
- 6.
Indeed, the obituary of Stoker, ‘buried’ in page 15 of The Times, was ‘largely dedicated to the man’s faithful service to the great actor Irving’ and it singled out Reminiscences of Irving as his ‘chief literary memorial’ (Luckhurst 2012). Even in death, Stoker is overshadowed by his friend and employer.
- 7.
Books by Bram Stoker , in chronological order, are The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (1879), Under the Sunset (1881), A Glimpse of America (1886), The Snake’s Pass (1890), The Watter’s Mou’ (1895), The Shoulder of Shasta (1895), Dracula (1897), Miss Betty (1898), The Mystery of the Sea (1902), The Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903), The Man (1905), Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906), Lady Athlyne (1908), Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party (1908), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), Famous Impostors (1910), The Lair of the White Worm (1911) and Dracula’s Guest—And Other Weird Stories (1914).
Today, these are mostly forgotten, so much so that Frederick R. Karl could still write in 2000 that Dracula is ‘the only one of Stoker’s fictions to be remembered’ (206).
- 8.
The Aspern Papers provides an example of Victorian cannibalism of the past, as Henry James cannibalises the story of Claire Clairmont (Mary Godwin’s half-sister and Lord Byron’s one-time lover) and her Romantic contemporaries.
- 9.
On the inspiration for Dracula , Harry Ludlam (1962) recounts an anecdote from Stoker’s son, Noel Stoker: ‘Noel told me that in a flippant mood his father attributed the genesis of Dracula to a nightmare he had after a surfeit of dressed crab at supper one night. It was a private family joke’ (27). It is also widely and incorrectly believed that Stoker based Count Dracula on his historical namesake, Vlad Dracula of Wallachia (1431–1476). According to Daniel Farson (1975), ‘Even a cursory assessment will show that Stoker seized on the name of Dracula , together with a vague impression of the background, and that was all’ (130). Barbara Belford (1997 [1996]) notes: ‘Clearly no one event, conversation, or personal frustration motivated Dracula . The novel’s genesis was a process, which involved Stoker’s education and interests, his fears and fantasies, as well as those of his Victorian colleagues’ (255–256). That said, Belford also believes that ‘Unravelling Dracula’s origins will continue as long as the novel endures’ (260).
- 10.
Stoker’s own Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving provides an invaluable account of his time as the theatre manager of Lyceum.
- 11.
It is interesting to compare the reception of Stoker’s Dracula with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Although each author is now famous primarily for one Gothic novel, Shelley’s authorial status seems much more respected than Stoker’s, perhaps due to the fact that she comes from ‘a network of familial writing influences’ (Spencer 2005: 119) and the feminist discussion that arises inherently from her authorship.
- 12.
In the preface to the first edition of The Castle of Otranto (1766 [1764]), Horace Walpole assumed ‘the borrowed personage of a translator’ (xiii) and claimed that the work was originally ‘found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England ’ and that ‘[i]t was printed at Naples , in the black letter, in the year 1529’ (v).
- 13.
Likewise, Leonard Wolf , editor of The Essential Dracula : The Definitive Annotated Edition of Bram Stoker’s Classic Novel (1975), also consistently points out errors and inconsistencies. Unlike Auerbach and Skal, Wolf disregards Stoker’s editor conceit altogether.
- 14.
- 15.
James Reese’s The Dracula Dossier (2008), another neo-Victorian reworking of Dracula , also adopts Stoker’s epistolary approach by including journals, letters and other documents.
- 16.
It is interesting that Leslie S. Klinger has annotated both Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and Stoker’s Dracula , using similar methods. Also, the Stoker Estate has endorsed the publication of the ‘official’ sequel to Dracula by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt (see Section VI) and similarly the Conan Doyle Estate agreed to allow Anthony Horowitz to write a new Sherlock Holmes adventure, House of Silk (2011).
- 17.
In the article ‘“Clap If You Believe in Sherlock Holmes ”: Mass Culture and the Re-Enchantment of Modernity, c. 1890–c. 1940’ (2003), Michael Slater writes, ‘Holmes was the first character in modern literature to be widely treated as if he were real and his creator fictitious’ (600), suggesting that the longevity of a fictional character sometimes compromises the author’s position, a phenomenon we see in the reception of Stoker’s Dracula as well.
- 18.
Other writers confront their anxiety over Stoker’s influence differently. Early on in Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula (1992), for example, we are told that Stoker has been put in jail after Count Dracula has married Queen Victoria and is therefore largely absent in the book. This is perhaps a rather uninspired way to both appropriate and contain Stoker in the text. Also, in Ivy Press’s The Original Vampire Diaries (2010), purportedly written by ‘Count Dracula ’, fun is had at the expense of Stoker—he is referred to as ‘mountebank’ and ‘witless fool’, and Dracula tops ‘The Worst Books’ list.
- 19.
See, for example, the following lines:
Verse
Verse But first, on earth as Vampire sent, Thy coarse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race ; There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life.
Nina Auerbach (1995) describes the vampire in ‘The Giaour’ as ‘a patriarchal, incestuous spirit who eats his dependent women’ (17).
- 20.
One is reminded of Sarah Waters’ neo-Victorian novel of a very similar title, Affinity (1999).
- 21.
That the names ‘Stoker’ and ‘Harker’ sound similar has led some critics to speculate that Harker is Stoker’s stand-in. Stoker’s recently discovered private notebook further consolidates the connection between the Victorian author and his character: ‘There are some definite parallels between this notebook and Jonathan Harker’s journal, and certain entries from Bram’s notebook actually resurfaced twentysomething years later in Dracula ’ (Flood 2011).
- 22.
Another famous annotated Victorian text to use this space is Lewis Carroll’s The Annotated Alice: The Definition Edition (1999), edited and introduced by Martin Gardner, with illustrations by John Tenniel. Unlike Klinger , however, Gardner does not argue that the Alice stories recount real events.
- 23.
The dramatic abridgement of the book which Stoker presented at a staged reading at the Lyceum Theatre was titled Dracula , Or, The Un-Dead (Farson 1975: 163), which is very close to Dacre Stoker and Holt’s title for their novel. Also, it is unclear whether the duo knew Freda Warrington’s Dracula the Undead, a sequel to Dracula commissioned by Penguin Books, first published in 1997 and reprinted in 2009, coinciding with the publication of the ‘official’ sequel. Interestingly, commenting on the title The Un-Dead, Barbara Belford (1997 [1996]) writes, ‘a novel called The Un-dead would never have endured into the twenty-first century’ (269). Ironically, it has.
- 24.
Stoker and Holt’s more empathetic portrayal of the vampire may be influenced by other contemporary works which seek to allow the vampires ‘to tell their own stories and consequently become more sympathetic ’ (Punter and Byron 2004: 271). Examples include Fred Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape (1975), Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) and Jody Scott’s I, Vampire (1984).
- 25.
The use of Elizabeth Bathory in a neo-Dracula text can be found in Raymond Rudorff’s The Dracula Archives (1971) as well. It is also not uncommon to see traces of Jack the Ripper in critical analyses and fictional reinterpretations of Dracula . Stoker himself even alludes to the gruesome Whitechapel murderer in his introduction to the Icelandic edition of his book (1901). See, for example, Nicholas Rance’s ‘“Jonathan’s Great Knife”: Dracula meets Jack the Ripper’ (2002), for a discussion of the association between Dracula and Jack the Ripper.
- 26.
See, for example, Rachel Carroll’s ‘Rethinking Generational History: Queer Histories of Sexuality in Neo-Victorian Feminist Fiction’ (2006).
- 27.
Her trio of neo-Victorian novels, Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999) and Fingersmith (2002) famously explore the nineteenth-century lesbian themes.
- 28.
Lesbian vampirism is perhaps a homage to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla (1872), which was in turn inspired by Coleridge’s poem ‘Christabel’ (1816).
- 29.
- 30.
In 1975, Daniel Farson mused, ‘with today’s tastes it is surprising there hasn’t been a Dragula’ (168–169). The word ‘dragula’ has, however, entered the online lexicon Urban Dictionary: ‘A male vampire who prefers to dress in women’s clothes’. There is also a song of the same title by the American heavy metal artist Rob Zombie, released in 1998.
References
Arata, Stephen D. ‘The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonisation’. In Glennis Byron (ed.), Dracula: Contemporary Critical Essays. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999 [1990], pp. 119–144.
Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
———. ‘Vampires in the Light’. In Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal (eds.), Dracula. By Bram Stoker, 1897. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997 [1995], pp. 389–404.
Bak, John S. Post/Modern Dracula: From Victorian Themes to Postmodern Praxis. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2007.
Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller; with a note on the text by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975.
Belford, Barbara. Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula. London: Phoenix, 1997 [1996].
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997 [1973].
Brewer, David A. The Afterlife of Character, 1726–1825. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion Books, 1992.
Carey, Peter. Jack Maggs. London: Faber & Faber, 1998 [1997].
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 1, ed. Henry Nelson. London: Pickering, 1836.
Farson, Daniel. The Man Who Wrote Dracula: A Biography of Bram Stoker. London: Joseph, 1975.
Flood, Alison. ‘Bram Stoker’s Notebooks Offered Cryptic Clues to Dracula’. Guardian, 18 October 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/18/bram-stoker-notebook-dracula.
Gaiman, Neil. ‘Introduction’. In The New Annotated Dracula. By Bram Stoker and edited by Leslie S. Klinger. London; New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.
Gelder, Ken. Reading the Vampire. London: Routledge, 1994.
Genette, Gerard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by J.E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 [1997].
Gutleben, Christian. Nostalgic Postmodernism: The Victorian Tradition and the Contemporary British Novel. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2001.
Holland, Tom. Supping with Panthers. London: Abacus, 2008 [1996].
Hughes, William. Bram Stoker’s Dracula: A Reader’s Guide. London: Continuum, 2009.
Hughes, William and Andrew Smith. ‘Introduction: Bram Stoker, the Gothic and the Development of Cultural Studies’. In William Hughes and Andrew Smith (eds.), Bram Stoker: History, Psychoanalysis and the Gothic. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, pp. 1–11.
Jackson, H.J. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2001.
Jackson, Holbrook. The Anatomy of Bibliomania. London: Faber & Faber, 1930.
Kaplan, Cora. Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2007.
Kelly, Stuart. ‘The New Penguin English Library Is a Far Cry from Its 1963 Version’. Guardian, 24 May 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/may/24/new-penguin-english-library-2012.
Klinger, S. Leslie, ed. The New Annotated Dracula. London; New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
Litt, Toby. ‘Aspern Capers’. Guardian, 2 (Nov 2002).
Luckhurst, Roger. ‘100 Years Ago Today: The Death of Bram Stoker’. OUP Blog, 2012. http://blog.oup.com/2012/04/bram-stoker-death-centenary-dracula/.
Ludlam, Harry. A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker. London: Fireside Press, 1962.
Macfarlane, Robert. Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Malchow, Howard L. Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Miller, Elizabeth. ‘Afterword’. In Dracula the Un-Dead. London: Harper, 2009, pp. 391–397.
Miller, Elizabeth and Dacre Stoker, eds. The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker. London: The Robson Press, 2012.
Milton, John. Areopagitica. Birmingham: E. Aber, 1868 [1644].
Murray, Paul. From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker. London: Pimlico, 2005 [2004].
Punter, David and Glennis Byron. The Gothic. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
Rogers, David. ‘Introduction’. In Dracula. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1993, pp. v–xix.
Said, Edward. Beginnings: Intention and Method. New York: Basic Books, 1975.
Savu, Laura E. Postmortem Postmodernists: The Afterlife of the Author in Recent Narrative. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009.
Senf, Carol A. Science and Social Science in Bram Stoker’s Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Skal, David J. ‘“His Hour upon the Stage”: Theatrical Adaptations of Dracula’. In Dracula. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997, pp. 371–381.
Slater, Michael. ‘“Clap If You Believe in Sherlock Holmes”: Mass Culture and the Re-Enchantment of Modernity, c.1890–c.1940’. The Historical Journal 46:3 (September 2003): pp. 599–622.
Slights, William W.E. Managing Readers: Printed Marginalia in English Renaissance Books. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
Spencer, Jane. Literary Relations: Kinship and the Canon 1660–1830. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1993 [1897].
Stoker, Dacre and Ian Holt. Dracula the Un-Dead. London: Harper, 2009.
Sutherland, John. Curiosities of Literature: A Book Lover’s Anthology of Literary Erudition. London: Arrow, 2008.
The Original Vampire Diaries. UK: Ivy Press, 2010.
Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. London: William Bathoe, 1766 [1764].
Wolf, Leonard. The Essential Dracula. New York; London: Plume, 1993.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ho, TM. (2019). Stoker and Neo-Draculas. In: Neo-Victorian Cannibalism. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02559-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02559-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02558-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02559-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)