Dracula, A Longman Cutural Edition

From Longman's Cultural Edition series, this new edition of Dracula, edited by Andrew Elfenbein, recovers the cultural complexity of Bram Stoker's novel and offers a wide array of contextualizing documents, including contemporary reviews and articles about Eastern Europe, science, gender, and media. Rather than tracing Dracula through all his later incarnations, this edition offers ways to understand the late Victorian origins of Bram Stoker’s remarkable book. While Dracula never simply reflects contemporary trends, reading it with knowledge of contemporary events and debates can clarify what may otherwise seem puzzling. Throughout, Stoker emphasizes that his vampire story takes place not in a hazy, fictional past, but in a sharply realized England of the 1890s. The materials in the sections of Cultural Contexts illuminate the references to Victorian culture in Stoker’s version of this seemingly timeless story.

List of Illustrations

About This Edition

Introduction

Table of Dates

Dracula (1897)

Appendix: “Dracula’s Guest”

Contexts

Victorian Reviews of Dracula

Times (London)

Times (Washington)

Eastern Europe

Charles Boner, from Transylvania: Its Products and its People

Edmund Cecil Johnson, from On the Track of the Crescent: Erratic Notes from Piraeus to Pesth

Emily Gerard, from “Transylvanian Superstitions”

Gender

[Anon.], from “The Age of Woman”

Sarah Grand. From “The Modern Girl”

Science

Max Nordau, from Degeneration.

Havelock Ellis, from The Criminal

Daniel Hack Tuke, from Sleep-Walking and Hypnotism

William Aitken, from The Science and Practice of Medicine

Media

James L. Andem, from A Practical Guide to the Use of the Edison Phonograph

C. L. McCluer Stevens, from “The Evolution of the Typewriter”

Thomas Allen Reed, from A Biography of Isaac Pitman (Inventor of Phonography)

Works Cited in the Notes

• The Cultural Contexts section on Eastern Europe features three of Stoker’s most important sources: works by Charles Boner, Edmund Cecil Johnson, and Emily Gerard, whose “Transylvanian Superstitions” was a key inspiration.
• The section on gender highlights the controversies swirling aroun the "New Woman," whose increasingly aggressive claim to a role in society was disturbing many while energizing others.
• Characters in Dracula look to science for answers to explain the psychology and behavior of Renfield, Dracula, and even each other. The section on science excerpts several of the most relevant texts: works on degeneration and criminality by Nordau and Ellis; on hypnosis by Hack Tuke; and on homicidal mania by Aitken.
• Dracula’s contemporaneity is nowhere more evident than in its involvement with new technology, from Harker’s Kodak camera to Mina’s traveling typewriter to Seward’s phonograph. Excerpts from handbooks and articles on the phonograph, the typewriter, and shorthand, will help you visualize just what the characters are describing and using.
• Longman Cultural Editions include both primary texts of major writers and contemporaneous material that contextualizes those texts, including reviews, critical essays, responses, and newspaper and magazine articles.
• Longman Cultural Editions can be purchased individually, or a single volume can be packaged at no additional cost with The Longman Anthology of British Literature.

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