Another Edition of Dracula
Bram Stoker, Dracula (New York: Penguin Books, October 14, 2025). Hardcover: $25. ISBN: 978-0-143138-99-0.
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“Bram Stoker’s iconic and immortal tale of desperate battle against a powerful, ancient vampire, with a foreword by acclaimed director Robert Eggers…” This is the second case where Penguin is introducing a vampire-story with a popular or industry-insider “Foreword” in this set of reviews. At least in this case Eggers actually mentions Dracula; though he describes it as he experienced it in popular-culture: dressing up for Halloween, and the like. A couple of pages into biographical reflections, Eggers announces that after “drama school in New York”, his “first lead role was Dracula on stage in the Hamptons…” And he was working on a “feature film adaptation of Nosferatu”. Then, he puffs why he loves this novel so much. This is not a helpful intro to this work, as most of it is irrelevant. The following editor’s “Introduction” clarifies that film portrayals have convinced audiences they are familiar with Dracula, even if few have read the novel itself cover-to-cover. The rest of this “Introduction” does offer some insightful commentary I have not seen in earlier editions. It mentions that “Stoker’s notes” describe intense research for this novel: “pages of words in Yorkshire dialect” used “to create the garrulous Mr. Swales of Whitby. Stoker studied meteorological patterns and the 1885 shipwreck at Whitby of the Dmitry…, which brings Count Dracula to England.” In my Handwriting Comparison Study, I demonstrate how “Stoker’s” handwriting in the “Manuscript of Lady of the Shroud (1909)” matches Hand-A, or Burnand’s handwriting in samples attributed to Burnand and others he ghostwrote for. Fiction was Burnand’s primary interest, and these detailed research-notes exemplify how he achieved realistic elements in this genre.
“When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries in his client’s castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England: a ship runs aground on the shores of Whitby, its crew vanished; beautiful Lucy Westenra slowly succumbs to a mysterious, wasting illness, her blood drained away; and the lunatic Renfield raves about the imminent arrival of his ‘master.’ In the ensuing battle of wills between the sinister Count and a determined group of adversaries—led by the intrepid vampire hunter Abraham van Helsing—Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre, probing into questions of identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.”
It is not an accident that this set includes two new editions of vampire-narratives: this genre continues to be popular in modern-gothic-horror, as well as in such new editions of past centuries’ popular successes. I mentioned that Francis Burnand ghostwrote “Byron’s” journals and Dracula in the previous review. “Byron” is mentioned five times in this new edition. The first mention is in a credit to Polidori’s character as a “Byronesque… demonic seducer”. Then, Byron is mentioned as the inspiration for the biography behind Polidori’s vampiric seductive character. It might have become necessary to mention Byron because he is mentioned in the body of this novel: “…A man does not like to prove such a truth; Byron excepted from the category, jealousy./ ‘And prove the very truth he most abhorred.’” This note is in response to the argument that it is difficult to “accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the ‘no’ of it…” (“Chapter XV: Dr. Seward’s Diary”).
Burnand was a very productive generalist, also ghostwriting for “Emily Bronte”, “Wilkie Collins’” mysteries, and “Joseph Conrad’s” African horror-novel, among other classics, and lesser known or light works, such as “Lewis Carroll’s” Alice in Wonderland.
There are no notes to help readers understand needed references/allusions in the body of this novel. And there is only a short back-matter section for “Further” reading. This would not be a good book for researchers to use, as it would require checking other editions to understand the text fully. This seems to be an edition intended for a mainstream audience of readers who have seen vampire-movies and are here tempted to read one of the formula-setting novels modern variants are based on. Thus, this is not a good book for library collections that probably already have at least one scholarly edition of this novel.
--Pennsylvania Literary Journal: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-summer-2025/