Bram Stoker's Dracula!

I'm reading Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

Dracula is one of those stories that is so familiar from film, comics, and other sources that it's worthwhile once and again to return to the original source to find out what's really true about the characters.

I've been getting some Dracula adaptations on film, and I want refresh my understanding of Stoker's original intent before I launch into these other versions. Dracula is a character who is so startling and compelling and one which has been transformed and reimagined so many ways that I think Stoker's original gets lost a bit.

I've also become aware recently that Dracula falls into a minor wave of Victorian fiction that foreshadows the fall of the British Empire by wondering what an invader on its shores would be like. Apparently several fanciful novels of the time fall into this vein of thought, War of the Worlds not being the least.

What got me started again was finding for very cheap The Illustrated Dracula featuirng the artwork of Jae Lee. I'm not a gigantic fan of Lee, nor do I think he quite captures the Count, but it's a handsome volume overall and reads very comfortably.

More Dracula-thoughts later.

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