On May 26, 1897, Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (e-book | e-audio | print | audio) was published. Dracula is the source for most of our modern vampire folklore, and the inspiration for much of the vampire fiction that has followed it.
Stoker, of course, did not invent the vampire. Tales of vampire-like creatures were told by the Mesopotamians, ancient Greeks and Romans, and other cultures. The stories that are closest to our modern idea of the vampire come from southwestern Europe. In the early 18th century, a mass paranoia about vampires spread through parts of Serbia, and several men were exhumed on suspicion of being vampires. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, vampires were appearing in poems by Goethe, Coleridge, and Byron.
The first important vampire novel was John Polidori's The Vampyr (e-book | print), published in 1819, which established many of the conventions upon which Stoker would draw, notably the idea of the vampire as an elegant, sophisticated gentleman. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1871 novella Carmilla (e-book | e-audio | print), in which a female vampire preys on a young woman, was also an important influence on Stoker. The men knew each other well; Le Fanu was Stoker's editor during Stoker's years working as a theater critic. For more about Stoker's life, David J. Skal's Something in the Blood (e-book | e-audio | print) is a thorough biography.
But it is Stoker's Dracula that remains the standard image of the vampire. Its image of vampirism as a horrifying disease, transmitted through the intimate contact of a bite, hit a nerve in a society where syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases were common.
It wasn't long before Dracula-related works began to appear, as people realized just how popular this character was. In 1914, Stoker himself published a chapter that had been edited out of the original novel, as the stand-alone Dracula's Guest (e-book | e-audio | print). Dracula was translated into many languages and published around the world. The 1901 Icelandic translation by Valdimar Asmundsson was an unusual case; it was more than a century later when scholars from outside Iceland looked as Asmundsson's work and realized that he hadn't simply translated Stoker's novel. Asmundsson had added characters, changed plot details, and condensed the story, making so many changes that his novel was eventually translated back into English and published as a "lost version of Dracula" called Powers of Darkness (e-book | print).
Today, you can find Dracula updated into science fiction by Brian Aldiss (e-book), or into erotic fiction by Syrie James (e-book | e-audio | print). He's been paired with Sherlock Holmes by both Stephen Seitz (e-book) and David Stuart Davies (e-audio), and battles one of history's greatest real-life monsters in Patrick Sheane Duncan's Dracula vs. Hitler (e-audio | print). Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series (e-book | print), imagines that he successfully escaped Transylvania for England, and tells stories of his life in 20th-century England and America. And Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew, Dacre Stoker, writing in collaboration with Ian Holt, has given us a sequel to the original, Dracula the Un-Dead (e-book | print | audio).
The movies have been even fonder of Dracula than the publishing industry; Sherlock Holmes is the only fictional character to star in more movies than Dracula. For his first appearance in film, F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent classic Nosferatu (streaming | DVD), the character names and a few plot details had to be changed, because Murnau hadn't gotten permission to use Stoker's novel, but the story is still recognizable. The 2000 movie Shadow of the Vampire (DVD) takes place during the filming of Nosferatu, and imagines that the actor playing Nosferatu actually was a vampire.
Bela Lugosi's performance in the 1931 Dracula (DVD) is probably the single biggest influence on our image of the character – the cape, the Hungarian accent, the slowly paced speech – and Lugosi struggled for the rest of his career to escape the shadow of the role. He would play Dracula only once more, in the 1948 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (DVD).
The actor who made the longest career of the role is Christopher Lee, who starred in seven Dracula movies for Hammer Films between 1957 and 1973, beginning with Horror of Dracula (DVD). Other famous film Draculas include Jack Palance (streaming), Frank Langella (DVD), Gary Oldman (DVD), and William Marshall in the 1972 blaxploitation film Blacula (DVD). There have been comic versions of the character, too, including Leslie Nielsen in the Mel Brooks film Dracula: Dead and Loving It (DVD), and Adam Sandler as the voice of a kid-friendly single-parent Dracula in the animated Hotel Transylvania (DVD).
We've only scratched the surface of Bram Stoker's influence on modern vampire fiction. These are only a handful of the novels and movies to star Dracula, and we haven't even mentioned the comic books, the video games, or the operas, ballets, and musicals that feature the Count. And when you consider all of the vampire fiction that, while not specifically about Count Dracula, owes a debt to the character, it becomes clear that Stoker's legacy is enormous.
Also this Week
May 25, 1803
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was born. Bulwer-Lytton was among the most popular authors of the Victorian era, and coined several phrases that have passed into common usage – "the pen is mightier than the sword," "the pursuit of the almighty dollar," "the great unwashed," and the much-parodied opening line, "It was a dark and stormy night." His novels were adapted into operas by Wagner (Rienzi) and Otello (Aroldo). Bulwer-Lytton's literary reputation declined rapidly after his death, though some of his novels are still occasionally read; perhaps the most popular is the historical novel The Last Days of Pompeii (e-book | print)
May 22 1939
Paul Winfield was born. Winfield acted in film, television, and theater for forty years. In the 1980s and 1990s, he played small but memorable roles in several popular science-fiction franchises, including Star Trek (television and movies), Babylon 5, and The Terminator. Winfield was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the 1972 drama Sounder (streaming | DVD), playing the father in a family of Depression-era sharecroppers, and later played a small role in a 2003 TV-movie remake (DVD).
May 20 1958
Jane Wiedlin was born. Wiedlin is a singer-songwriter who was the rhythm guitarist for the 80s band The Go-Go's. Between 1981 and 1984, the Go-Go's released three albums, featuring such hits as "We Got the Beat" and "Vacation." The Go-Go's disbanded in 1985 (though they have made several reunion tours and appearances), and Wiedlin has recorded several solo albums. Wiedlin's music, both solo and with the Go-Go's, is available for streaming.
May 26 is National Paper Airplane Day
We don't know when the first paper airplanes were made, but artistic forms of paper folding existed in China and Japan by the fifth century BCE, shortly after the first mass manufacture of paper. Paper aircraft were used for hundreds of years by scientists and engineers testing the properties of flight; the Wright Brothers used paper models in a wind tunnel as they developed the first powered airplane. In recent decades, scientific advances have allowed paper planes to fly for longer times and further distances; the current world records are 27.9 seconds for time and 226 feet 10 inches for distance. A wide variety of e-books on paper airplanes are available.