It is widely believed that "Dracula's Guest" is actually the deleted first chapter from the original Dracula manuscript, which the publisher felt was superfluous to the story. However, some scholars, such as David J. Skal and Elizabeth Miller, disagree.[1] In the preface to the original edition of Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories, Stoker's widow Florence wrote, "To his original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It was originally excised owing to the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband's most remarkable work."[2]
Leslie S. Klinger, who had access to Stoker's original Dracula manuscript[3] while researching his 2008 book The New Annotated Dracula, saw evidence of "Dracula's Guest" having been deleted from the manuscript, such as a deleted sentence of Harker commenting that his throat is "still sore from the licking of the gray wolf's file-like tongue"[4] and the first and second chapters of the finished novel being labeled in the manuscript as "ii"[5] and "iii".[6] Klinger ultimately concludes the following:
And so what may we make of ["Dracula's Guest"]? Without the name "Dracula" appearing in the title and [Dracula's] message [sent to the narrator], there would be very little to connect this traveler's tale with [the novel Dracula]. The style is completely different; the narrator shares few characteristics with Jonathan Harker; and the action somehow fails to connect the story set forth in [Dracula]. However, there are numerous references in the [Dracula] Manuscript to some version of the tale eventually published as "Dracula's Guest." Most likely, a different draft — one that identified the narrator as Harker — was included in ... an early version of [the Dracula manuscript]. It may be that Stoker's publisher requested that the book be shortened, or the publisher (or Stoker) may have felt that the "stylistic" aspects of the narrative were more important than its veracity. For whatever reason, the material was excised, and only later did Stoker return to the material and work it into its published form.[7]
Plot summary
"Dracula's Guest" follows an Englishman (whose name is never mentioned but is presumed to be Jonathan Harker) on a visit to Munich before leaving for Transylvania. It is Walpurgis Night, and in spite of the hotelier's warning to not be late back, the young man later leaves his carriage and wanders toward the direction of an abandoned 'unholy' village. As the carriage departs with the frightened and superstitious driver, a tall and thin stranger scares the horses at the crest of a hill.
Upon reaching a desolate valley after a few hours, it begins to snow and as a dark storm gathers intensity, Harker takes shelter in a grove of cypress and yew trees. Harker's location is soon illuminated by moonlight to be a cemetery, and he finds himself before a marble tomb with a large iron stake driven through the roof, the inscription reads: Countess Dolingen of Gratz / in Styria / sought and found death / 1801. Inscribed on the back of the tomb "graven in great Russian letters" is: The dead travel fast.
Harker is disturbed to be in such a place on such a night and as the storm breaks anew, he is forced by hail to shelter in the doorway of the tomb. As Harker avoids the pelting hail, the bronze door of the tomb opens under his weight and a flash of forked lightning shows the interior - and a "beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier". The force of the following thunder peal throws Harker from the doorway (experienced as "being grasped as by the hand of a giant") as another lightning bolt strikes the iron spike, destroying the tomb and the now screaming woman inside.
The Englishman's troubles are not quite over, as he painfully regains his senses from the ordeal, he is repulsed by a feeling of loathing which he connects to a warm feeling in his chest and a licking at this throat. Harker summons courage to peek through his eyelashes and discovers a gigantic wolf with flaming eyes is attending him.
Military horsemen are the next to wake the semi-conscious man, chasing the wolf away with torches and guns. Some horsemen return to the main party and Harker after the chase, reporting that they had not found 'him' and that Harker's animal is: "A wolf - and yet not a wolf". They also note that blood is on the ruined tomb yet Harker's neck is un-bloodied, "See comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his blood warm", strangely later, Harker finds his neck pained when a horseman comments on it.
When Harker is taken back to his hotel by the men, he is informed that it is none other than his expectant host Dracula that has alerted his employees, the horsemen, of "dangers from snow and wolves and night" in a telegram received by the hotel in the time Harker was away.
Film, TV, and other adaptations
* David O. Selznick bought the film rights to "Dracula's Guest" and later re-sold them to Universal Studios. Universal's 1936 film Dracula's Daughter was ostensibly based on the story, although it uses nothing from the plot.[8]
* Vampyros Lesbos a 1971 erotic horror film directed by Jesus Franco was "inspired" by Bram Stoker's short story.
* A radio drama adaptation of "Dracula's Guest" was produced in 1999 by the Radio Tales series for National Public Radio.
* Bram Stoker's Dracula's Curse, a 2006 film by The Asylum, takes its title from the alternate name for Dracula's Guest, but bears little resemblance to the actual story by Bram Stoker.
* A direct-to-DVD film titled Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest was released in 2008, though it is not an adaptation of the story and uses nothing of the plot.
* The 2008 book Dracula's Heir, written by Sam Stall, treats "Dracula's Guest" as a true story and expands it. In Dracula's Heir, the story revolves around why the chapter was removed from Dracula. The female vampire in "Dracula's Guest" is revealed to be the killer in Dracula's Heir, and the reason the chapter was removed was because she did not want her identity revealed.
* Dracula was adapted in 2009 as a five-part comic book miniseries from Dynamite Entertainment. The miniseries, titled The Complete Dracula, incorporates "Dracula's Guest" into the story.[9]
* A comic book adaptation by Stephen Antczak, James Bassett and Steven Sanders was published by Robot Comics in 2010. [10]
* Joel Surnow announced that he pitched an adaption of Dracula's Guest as a Television series to The CW and is scheduled to debut in November 2010. Bradley Cooper has been cast as the role of Dracula.
Leslie S. Klinger, who had access to Stoker's original Dracula manuscript[3] while researching his 2008 book The New Annotated Dracula, saw evidence of "Dracula's Guest" having been deleted from the manuscript, such as a deleted sentence of Harker commenting that his throat is "still sore from the licking of the gray wolf's file-like tongue"[4] and the first and second chapters of the finished novel being labeled in the manuscript as "ii"[5] and "iii".[6] Klinger ultimately concludes the following:
And so what may we make of ["Dracula's Guest"]? Without the name "Dracula" appearing in the title and [Dracula's] message [sent to the narrator], there would be very little to connect this traveler's tale with [the novel Dracula]. The style is completely different; the narrator shares few characteristics with Jonathan Harker; and the action somehow fails to connect the story set forth in [Dracula]. However, there are numerous references in the [Dracula] Manuscript to some version of the tale eventually published as "Dracula's Guest." Most likely, a different draft — one that identified the narrator as Harker — was included in ... an early version of [the Dracula manuscript]. It may be that Stoker's publisher requested that the book be shortened, or the publisher (or Stoker) may have felt that the "stylistic" aspects of the narrative were more important than its veracity. For whatever reason, the material was excised, and only later did Stoker return to the material and work it into its published form.[7]
Plot summary
"Dracula's Guest" follows an Englishman (whose name is never mentioned but is presumed to be Jonathan Harker) on a visit to Munich before leaving for Transylvania. It is Walpurgis Night, and in spite of the hotelier's warning to not be late back, the young man later leaves his carriage and wanders toward the direction of an abandoned 'unholy' village. As the carriage departs with the frightened and superstitious driver, a tall and thin stranger scares the horses at the crest of a hill.
Upon reaching a desolate valley after a few hours, it begins to snow and as a dark storm gathers intensity, Harker takes shelter in a grove of cypress and yew trees. Harker's location is soon illuminated by moonlight to be a cemetery, and he finds himself before a marble tomb with a large iron stake driven through the roof, the inscription reads: Countess Dolingen of Gratz / in Styria / sought and found death / 1801. Inscribed on the back of the tomb "graven in great Russian letters" is: The dead travel fast.
Harker is disturbed to be in such a place on such a night and as the storm breaks anew, he is forced by hail to shelter in the doorway of the tomb. As Harker avoids the pelting hail, the bronze door of the tomb opens under his weight and a flash of forked lightning shows the interior - and a "beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier". The force of the following thunder peal throws Harker from the doorway (experienced as "being grasped as by the hand of a giant") as another lightning bolt strikes the iron spike, destroying the tomb and the now screaming woman inside.
The Englishman's troubles are not quite over, as he painfully regains his senses from the ordeal, he is repulsed by a feeling of loathing which he connects to a warm feeling in his chest and a licking at this throat. Harker summons courage to peek through his eyelashes and discovers a gigantic wolf with flaming eyes is attending him.
Military horsemen are the next to wake the semi-conscious man, chasing the wolf away with torches and guns. Some horsemen return to the main party and Harker after the chase, reporting that they had not found 'him' and that Harker's animal is: "A wolf - and yet not a wolf". They also note that blood is on the ruined tomb yet Harker's neck is un-bloodied, "See comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his blood warm", strangely later, Harker finds his neck pained when a horseman comments on it.
When Harker is taken back to his hotel by the men, he is informed that it is none other than his expectant host Dracula that has alerted his employees, the horsemen, of "dangers from snow and wolves and night" in a telegram received by the hotel in the time Harker was away.
Film, TV, and other adaptations
* David O. Selznick bought the film rights to "Dracula's Guest" and later re-sold them to Universal Studios. Universal's 1936 film Dracula's Daughter was ostensibly based on the story, although it uses nothing from the plot.[8]
* Vampyros Lesbos a 1971 erotic horror film directed by Jesus Franco was "inspired" by Bram Stoker's short story.
* A radio drama adaptation of "Dracula's Guest" was produced in 1999 by the Radio Tales series for National Public Radio.
* Bram Stoker's Dracula's Curse, a 2006 film by The Asylum, takes its title from the alternate name for Dracula's Guest, but bears little resemblance to the actual story by Bram Stoker.
* A direct-to-DVD film titled Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest was released in 2008, though it is not an adaptation of the story and uses nothing of the plot.
* The 2008 book Dracula's Heir, written by Sam Stall, treats "Dracula's Guest" as a true story and expands it. In Dracula's Heir, the story revolves around why the chapter was removed from Dracula. The female vampire in "Dracula's Guest" is revealed to be the killer in Dracula's Heir, and the reason the chapter was removed was because she did not want her identity revealed.
* Dracula was adapted in 2009 as a five-part comic book miniseries from Dynamite Entertainment. The miniseries, titled The Complete Dracula, incorporates "Dracula's Guest" into the story.[9]
* A comic book adaptation by Stephen Antczak, James Bassett and Steven Sanders was published by Robot Comics in 2010. [10]
* Joel Surnow announced that he pitched an adaption of Dracula's Guest as a Television series to The CW and is scheduled to debut in November 2010. Bradley Cooper has been cast as the role of Dracula.
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula. It was first published as a hardcover in 1897 by Archibald Constable and Co.[1]
Dracula has been attributed to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. Structurally it is an epistolary novel, that is, told as a series of letters, diary entries, ships' logs, etc. Literary critics have examined many themes in the novel, such as the role of women in Victorian culture, conventional and conservative sexuality, immigration, colonialism, postcolonialism and folklore. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical, film and television interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Dracula has been attributed to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. Structurally it is an epistolary novel, that is, told as a series of letters, diary entries, ships' logs, etc. Literary critics have examined many themes in the novel, such as the role of women in Victorian culture, conventional and conservative sexuality, immigration, colonialism, postcolonialism and folklore. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical, film and television interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.