Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of Nov. 8th
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It is the 312th day of the year, leaving 53 days remaining in 2022.
Stoker wrote several books over his career, but only one mattered: Dracula, arguably one of the most famous works in English literature. It is the quintessential Gothic horror novel; as a vampire, Count Dracula had no peer.
The book remains popular with the average reader. Critics and English majors have written hundreds of treatises on it, exploring its themes of sex and sexuality, gender, seduction, race and ethnic issues, and the Victorian fear of disease. The vampire genre has been recreated by hundreds of writers, from H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King to Anne Rice.
Dracula has been adapted for the stage and screen dozens of times; the first movie, Nosferatu, was released in 1922. Stoker's estate promptly sued the producers, and a judge ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed.
The book itself takes the epistolary style, written in the form of journals of and letters from the main character, Jonathan Harker. He had met Count Dracula at his castle in Transylvania and realized he needed blood to live and stay young. The novel shifts to England, and after a serious of horrifying and frightening adventures, Harker manages to slay the vampire.
The inspiration for the Dracula character has long been debated. It could a 15th Century Romanian prince known as Vlad the Impaler. It could be a dreadful tyrant of Irish folklore. It could be Sir Henry Irving, an actor Stoker worked for as a personal assistant.
While Stoker took copious notes during his research in preparation for writing the novel, the question has never been definitively answered. Scholars and critics continue to discuss the issue.
Stoker died in 1912.
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