EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY MAURICE HINDLE 'No book since Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein, or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality, or terror -Poe is nowhere ...' - Charlotte Stoker Told in journal fragments that cannot provide any single reliable perspective, Dracula (1897) is at the same time intensely Romantic and very modern.  It unfolds the story of a Transylvanian Don Juan, the aristocratic vampire Count Dracula who preys on desirous damsels, and of the mission launched to destroy him from the perplexingly appropriate setting of a lunatic asylum. Dracula, perhaps the ultimate terror myth, probes deeply into the questions of human identity and sanity, sexual power versus sexual desire, and what Freud was to call ‘the return of the repressed'.  Bram Stoker's masterpiece embodies a struggle which, as Maurice Hindle remarks, is the struggle to recover 'an embattled male's deepest sense of himself as male'.   The cover photograph shows Henry Irving as Mephistopheles from the collections of the Theatre Museum by courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

"Dracula", a very well written and compelling suspense thriller revealing fears that may lurk in the darkest and dank reaches of mortal man. And where more appropriate place setting for such a tail that the mystic valleys and castles of the eerie Transylvania.  A place where Gypsies brew magical remedies, gnomes wonder about, and all sorts of wondrous and not so wondrous things take place. And this is the place well-regarded London notary Jonathan Harker sets sail for to place before Count Dracula the paper to purchase a London estate.
It doesn't take long for the young Harker to happen upon the magical and evil powers the count posses.  Vain attempts at escaping from Dracula's grasp thwart his willpower. Facing possibly never seeing his beloved fiancée Mina again, Harker attempts several times quite unsuccessfully to take his own life.
Determined to arrive at his new resting-place in London, the Count takes passage on a Russian ship.  The ship sails into Whitby Port  near London with the crew missing and its captain slung dead of the ship wheel.  The only living thing aboard is a wild looking dog, the new embodiment of Count Dracula.
As Mina awaits word of Jonathan in Transylvania, she is beset with yet another problem. Her closest friend, Lucy, begins to suffer from an uncanny illness. Enter stage left Dr. John Seward and Abraham Van Helsing.  Seward, owner of a lunatic asylum, and Helsing, a brilliant Dutch scientist, discover Lucy is destined to become a vampire.
Working with Mr. Godalming, Lucy's betrothed, and Morris Quencey, a close friend; the four locate Lucy's hidden resting place and put her soul to rest with a swift strike of a stake to the heart.
Meanwhile, Mina travelled to Budapest after receiving a letter from a hospital informing her of Harker's whereabouts. After getting married amongst the mosques of  that ancient city, they return to London where they learn of Lucy's tragic demise.
Angered by the disruption to their lives and the danger the count poses  to mortals, they band together into a clan determined to rid the world of Dracula. The quest is hindered by the count's interest and the capitulation of Mina to his desires.  Mina is already undergoing the transition process.
The five men, aware of Mina's fate, hasten their search for all the coffins filled with his native soil that Dracula has hidden inside his many lairs.  Unable to sustain life without his life-giving soil, Dracula attempts to retreat to his homeland and the safety of his castle. But, alas, the count does not reach his refuge. The five men come upon a band of Gypsies as they trudge up the hill toward the foreboding castle carrying Dracula's body.
A minor battle of determined men ensues.  It leaves Quincey mortally  wounded, the Gypsies are either killed or flee.  But the crowning act is the sound of wood crushing against ribs and the final gasps of the count as his sole is released from the antichrist.
And as most love stories end: Jonathan and Mina return to London and live happily ever after.