"Dracula's Guest" | |
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by Bram Stoker | |
![]() Cover of Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914) | |
Country | Ireland |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Horror |
Published in | Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories |
Media type | Hardcover |
Publication date | 1914 |
Dracula's Guest is a short story by Bram Stoker, first published in the short story collection Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914). It was written as the first chapter for Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula , but was deleted prior to publication as the original publishers felt it was superfluous to the story.
"Dracula's Guest" follows an Englishman (whose name is never mentioned, but is presumed to be Jonathan Harker) on a visit to Munich before leaving for Transylvania. It is Walpurgis Night, and in spite of the hotelier's warning to not return late, the young man later leaves his carriage and wanders toward the direction of an abandoned "unholy" village. As the carriage departs with the frightened and superstitious driver, a tall and thin stranger scares the horses at the crest of a hill.
After a few hours, as he reaches a desolate valley, it begins to snow; as a dark storm gathers intensity, the Englishman takes shelter in a grove of cypress and yew trees. The Englishman's location is soon illuminated by moonlight to be a cemetery, and he finds himself before a marble tomb with a large iron stake driven through the roof, the inscription reads: "Countess Dolingen of Gratz / in Styria / sought and found death / 1801". The Englishman is disturbed to be in such a place on such a night and as the storm breaks anew, he is forced by pelting hail to shelter in the doorway of the tomb. As he does so, the bronze door of the tomb opens under his weight and a flash of forked lightning shows the interior, revealing a "beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier". The force of the following thunder peal throws the Englishman from the doorway (experienced as "being grasped as by the hand of a giant") as another lightning bolt strikes the iron spike, destroying the tomb and the now screaming woman inside.
The Englishman's troubles are not quite over, as he painfully regains his senses from the ordeal, he is repulsed by a feeling of loathing which he connects to a warm feeling in his chest and a licking at this throat. The Englishman summons courage to peek through his eyelashes and discovers a gigantic wolf with flaming eyes is attending him.
Military horsemen are the next to wake the semi-conscious man, chasing the wolf away with torches and guns. Some horsemen return to the main party and the Englishman after the chase, reporting that they had not found 'him' and that the Englishman's animal is "a wolf—and yet not a wolf". They also note that blood is on the ruined tomb, yet the Englishman's neck is unbloodied. "See comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his blood warm". Later, the Englishman finds his neck pained when a horseman comments on it.
When the Englishman is taken back to his hotel by the men, he is informed that it is none other than his expectant host Count Dracula that has alerted the Maître d'hôtel of "dangers from snow and wolves and night" in a telegram during the time the Englishman was away.
It is widely believed that "Dracula's Guest" is actually the deleted first chapter from the original Dracula manuscript, which the publisher felt was superfluous to the story. [1] In the preface to the original edition of Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories, Stoker's widow Florence wrote, "To his original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It was originally excised owing to the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband's most remarkable work." [2]
Leslie S. Klinger, who had access to Stoker's original Dracula manuscript [3] while researching his 2008 book The New Annotated Dracula, saw evidence of "Dracula's Guest" having been deleted from the manuscript, such as a deleted sentence of Harker commenting that his throat is "still sore from the licking of the gray wolf's file-like tongue" [4] and the first and second chapters of the finished novel being labeled in the manuscript as "ii" [5] and "iii". [6] Klinger ultimately concludes the following:
And so what may we make of ["Dracula's Guest"]? Without the name "Dracula" appearing in the title and [Dracula's] message [sent to the narrator], there would be very little to connect this traveler's tale with [the novel Dracula]. The style is completely different; the narrator shares few characteristics with Jonathan Harker; and the action somehow fails to connect the story set forth in [Dracula]. However, there are numerous references in the [Dracula] Manuscript to some version of the tale eventually published as "Dracula's Guest." Most likely, a different draft – one that identified the narrator as Harker – was included in ... an early version of [the Dracula manuscript]. It may be that Stoker's publisher requested that the book be shortened, or the publisher (or Stoker) may have felt that the "stylistic" aspects of the narrative were more important than its veracity. For whatever reason, the material was excised, and only later did Stoker return to the material and work it into its published form. [7]
Further deleted sentences from Harker include the mention of his "adventures in Munich" in a conversation with Dracula. Also the "fair women" of the female vampires reminds him of the woman he "had seen in the tomb of Walpurgis Night". [8]
The Swedish scholar Rickard Berghorn noted that the description of the countess in Dracula's Guest closely resembled the description of the female Vampire in the Powers of Darkness , which he used to argue that the blonde vampire in Dracula's Guest was her. [9]
The inscription on the tomb is now recognised as being a tribute to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, one of Stoker's fellow predecessor in terms of vampire writing. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) deals with a protagonist showing resemblances with Countess Dolingen. Carmilla's main protagonist is ultimately revealed to be Countess Millarca Karnestein, a vampire. [10] Inscribed on the back of the tomb, graven in great Russian letters, is: "The dead travel fast", which was an ode to the fable "Lenore".
Some experts believe the deleted opening was based on the Austrian princess Eleonore von Schwarzenberg, [11] as discussed in the TV documentary Vampire Princess. [12]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(July 2010) |
Radio Mirchi Kolkata a radio station based in eastern part of India Kolkata started a Dracula series adapting Bram stroker's Dracula starting with Dracula 's guest as their first story
Abraham Stoker was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned. In his early years, Stoker worked as a theatre critic for an Irish newspaper, and wrote stories as well as commentaries. He also enjoyed travelling, particularly to Cruden Bay where he set two of his novels. During another visit to the English coastal town of Whitby, Stoker drew inspiration for writing Dracula. He died on 20 April 1912 due to locomotor ataxia and was cremated in north London. Since his death, his magnum opus Dracula has become one of the most well-known works in English literature, and the novel has been adapted for numerous films, short stories, and plays.
Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 26 years. First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72), the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. The character is a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist. The novella notably never acknowledges homosexuality as an antagonistic trait, leaving it subtle and morally ambiguous. The story is often anthologised, and has been adapted many times in film and other media.
Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunt Dracula and, in the end, kill him.
Vampire literature covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires. The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which was inspired by the life and legend of Lord Byron. Later influential works include the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire (1847); Sheridan Le Fanu's tale of a lesbian vampire, Carmilla (1872), and the most well known: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Some authors created a more "sympathetic vampire", with Varney being the first, and Anne Rice's 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire as a more recent example.
The Tomb of Dracula is an American horror comic book series published by Marvel Comics from April 1972 to August 1979. The 70-issue series featured a group of vampire hunters who fought Count Dracula and other supernatural menaces. On rare occasions, Dracula would work with these vampire hunters against a common threat or battle other supernatural threats on his own, but more often than not, he was the antagonist rather than protagonist. In addition to his supernatural battles in this series, Marvel's Dracula often served as a supervillain to other characters in the Marvel Universe, battling the likes of Blade the Vampire Slayer, Spider-Man, the Werewolf, the X-Men, Howard the Duck, and the licensed Robert E. Howard character Solomon Kane.
Professor Abraham Van Helsing, a fictional character from the 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula, is an aged Dutch polymath doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "MD, D.Ph., D.Litt., etc.", indicating a wealth of experience, education and expertise. He is a Doctor, Professor, Lawyer, Philosopher, Scientist and Metaphysic. The character is best known through many adaptations of the story as a vampire slayer, monster hunter and the archnemesis of Count Dracula, and the prototypical and the archetypical parapsychologist in subsequent works of paranormal fiction.
Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character and the main female character in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula.
Quincey P. Morris is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic novel Dracula.
Vampire films have been a staple in world cinema since the era of silent films, so much so that the depiction of vampires in popular culture is strongly based upon their depiction in films throughout the years. The most popular cinematic adaptation of vampire fiction has been from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, with over 170 versions to date. Running a distant second are adaptations of the 1872 novel Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. By 2005, the Dracula character had been the subject of more films than any other fictional character except Sherlock Holmes.
The Brides of Dracula are fictional characters in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. They are three seductive female vampire "sisters" who reside with Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania, where they entrance men with their beauty and charm, and then proceed to feed upon them. Dracula provides them with victims to devour, mainly implied to be infants.
Lucy Westenra is a fictional character in the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The 19-year-old daughter of a wealthy family, she is Mina Murray's best friend and Count Dracula's first English victim. She subsequently transforms into a vampire and is eventually destroyed.
Jonathan Harker is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. His journey to Transylvania and encounter with the vampire Count Dracula and his Brides at Castle Dracula constitutes the dramatic opening scenes in the novel and most of the film adaptations. Stoker appropriated the surname from his friend Joseph Cunningham Harker (1855–1920), a set designer at the Lyceum Theatre and father of actor William Gordon Harker (1885–1967) as well as great-grandfather of actress Polly Adams, whose actress-daughters Susannah Harker and Caroline Harker adopted the Harker surname for their stage names.
Dracula is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is based on the vampire Count Dracula from the novel of the same name by author Bram Stoker. After the initial run of the series The Tomb of Dracula, the character has been depicted primarily as an antagonist to superheroes in the Marvel Universe.
Count Dracula is the title character of Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula. He is considered to be both the prototypical and the archetypal vampire in subsequent works of fiction. Aspects of the character are believed by some to have been inspired by the 15th-century Wallachian Prince Vlad the Impaler, who was also known as Dracula, and by Sir Henry Irving, an actor for whom Stoker was a personal assistant.
Dracula, also known as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Dan Curtis' Dracula, is a 1974 British made-for-television gothic horror film and adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. It was written by Richard Matheson and directed by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis, with Jack Palance in the title role. It was the second collaboration for Curtis and Palance after the 1968 TV film The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The character of Count Dracula from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, has remained popular over the years, and many forms of media have adopted the character in various forms. In their book Dracula in Visual Media, authors John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart declared that no other horror character or vampire has been emulated more times than Count Dracula. Most variations of Dracula across film, comics, television, documentaries predominantly explore Dracula as he was portrayed in film with only a few more closely adapting Stoker's original narrative. These including borrowing the look of Count Dracula in both the Universal's series of Dracula and Hammer's series of Dracula, including include the characters clothing, mannerisms, physical features hair style and his motivations such as wanting to be a nearby home away from Europe.
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