Boek
Essential Dracula, The
| Auteur | Bram Stoker , Leonard Wolf (redacteur) |
| Eerste Uitgave | 1993 |
| Uitgave | 1993 |
| Uitgeverij | Plume |
| Vorm | roman |
| Taal | Engels |
| Bladzijden | 484 bladzijden |
| Gelezen | 2003-09-16 |
| Score | 8/10 |
Inhoud
The Definitive Annotated Edition of Bram Stoker's Classic Novel
The complete text (including the missing
first chapter,
Dracula's Guest
) of Bram Stoker's original novel, fully annotated with thousands of fascinating facts and legends about Dracula, Transylvania, and vampires... everything you ever wanted to know about literature's most famous Count.
The Essential Dracula also includes:
A major new introduction essay by Leonard Wolf that provides background on Stoker's classic, examines the cultural history of the Dracula myth, and traces the literary history of the vampire novel from John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819) to Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat (1985)...
A selected filmography of major vampire films, from F.W. Murman's silent classic Nosferatu (1922) to Francis Ford Coppola's blockbuster Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Commentary by leading contemporary horror writers, including Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, and many more...
Over 35 illustrations, including stunning new Dracula illustrations by Christopher Bing...
The Essential Dracula is the most complete na d comprehensive edition of the world's greatest horror story.
Bespreking
The vampire novel!
Actually Dracula does not need a lot of explanation. Everybody must have experienced at least once the myth of Count Dracula in any form: film, television or book. No character has ever ignited so much imagination than the Chief Vampire of Transylvania. It is absolutely no surprise that this book is still read by thousands of people worldwide.
The narrative unfolds itself by combining letters, newspaper clippings, journal entries and even phonograph records. This certainly adds to the mysterious atmosphere that dominates the first half of the book, but turns a bit against the story when the action really starts. Simply by reading a letter written by Miss Mina Murray, you are already informed that Mina will survive the struggle described by her. Technically this method also puts extra constraints on the author. Knowing this, it is fun to see how many tricks Stoker needed to keep the flow of letters going. At one point in the story he has to send Doctor Van Helsing back home, just so he can respond with a letter. Of course, it would have been quite silly to have two people writing each other letters while they are living in the same house.
The story itself is very powerful, but to modern readers it is often perceived as being dense and overcrowded with details. This is typical to Victorian novels, in which the women are always tender and caring and the men brave and intelligent. It seems that these conclusions have to be underlined on every page of the book. Still Bram Stoker succeeds in winning the attention of the reader by supplying an unprecedented richness to the story. The plot is filled with unexpected twists, remarkable action sequences and rather eerie -sometimes almost erotic- confrontations with evil entities. No situation is left unused to heighten the mystery. Even for the spoiled modern reader, some lugubrious scenes can still be experienced as hair-raising; a treat that most modern novels can't claim so easily.
Keeping in mind that this is a typical Victorian extravaganza and that the story suffers a bit under its form, one can but only admit that Dracula must be 'the' classic vampire novel. Although there is a lot of 'derived' work on the market, no one can truly claim to know the legend of Dracula without having read Bram Stoker's novel.