Dracula (Unabridged Text)

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. It introduced the character of Count Dracula, and established many conventions of subsequent vampire fantasy. The novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and of the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and a woman led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Dracula has been assigned to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel, and invasion literature. The novel has spawned numerous theatrical, film, and television interpretations. The story of Dracula has been the basis for numerous films and plays. Stoker himself wrote the first theatrical adaptation, which was presented at the Lyceum Theatre on 18 May 1897 under the title Dracula, or The Undead shortly before the novel's publication and performed only once, in order to establish his own copyright for such adaptations. This adaption was first published only a century later in October 1997. The first motion picture to feature Dracula was Dracula's Death, produced in Hungary in 1921. The now-lost film, however, was not an adaptation of Stoker's novel, but featured an original story. In 1958, British film company Hammer Film Productions followed the success of its The Curse of Frankenstein from the previous year with Dracula, released in the US as Horror of Dracula, directed by Terence Fisher. Fisher's production featured Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. It was an international hit for Hammer Film, and Lee fixed the image of the fanged vampire in popular culture. Both Lee and Cushing reprised their roles multiple times over the next decade and a half, concluding with The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (with Cushing but not Lee) in 1974.