Dracula

Dracula is a Gothic horror novel by the Irish author Bram Stoker, published in 1897. It is told through letters, diaries, telegrams and newspaper reports rather than by a single narrator, and it assembles its story from several people's accounts of the same events. It is the novel that shaped the modern English-language idea of the vampire.

Jonathan Harker, a solicitor, travels to a castle in Transylvania to settle a client's affairs and finds that his host is not alive. Count Dracula soon leaves for England, where he begins feeding on the people of a seaside town. Harker's journal, his fiancee Mina's letters and the records of a doctor in the town where the ship comes ashore all form part of the narrative.

The group that sets out to destroy him is led by Professor Van Helsing, and it includes a doctor, an American and two men who loved the same woman. They work from the records they have collected, which is why the novel is built out of documents rather than narration. Stoker wrote it after research into European folklore and into the history of the region, and the vampire's rules are consistent enough for the characters to plan around them.

The novel has been adapted for stage, film and television many times, and it is a standalone story. It was followed by Stoker's other novels, including a sequel of sorts, Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories.