Dracula then makes a pact with the Prince of Darkness, and becomes a vampire. As time goes by, Dracula discovers the existence of a manuscript that allegedly details a rite which brings damned souls back from the beyond. In Dracula: Origin, the player takes the role of the famous Professor Van Helsing whose life's aim is the destruction of Dracula. What are the origins of Count Dracula? The very first appearance of 'Count Dracula' is in Bram Stoker's novel DRACULA (1897). But Stoker did not make up the.
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BackgroundBetween 1879 and 1898, Stoker was a business manager for the in London, where he supplemented his income by writing many sensational novels, his most successful being the vampire tale Dracula published on 26 May 1897.: 269 Parts of it are set around the town of, where he spent summer holidays.Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, authors such as, and wrote many tales in which fantastic creatures threatened the British Empire. Was at a peak, and Stoker's formula was very familiar by 1897 to readers of fantastic adventure stories, of an invasion of England by continental European influences. Victorian readers enjoyed Dracula as a good adventure story like many others, but it did not reach its legendary status until later in the 20th century when film versions began to appear. PublicationDracula was published in London in May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company. Costing six shillings, the novel was bound in yellow cloth and titled in red letters. It was copyrighted in the United States in 1899 with the publication by Doubleday & McClure of New York.
But when Universal Studios purchased the rights, it came to light that Bram Stoker had not complied with a portion of US copyright law, placing the novel into the public domain. In the United Kingdom and other countries following the on copyrights, the novel was under copyright until April 1962, fifty years after Stoker's death. Cover of, a collection of short stories authored byThe short story 'Dracula's Guest' was posthumously published in 1914, two years after Stoker's death. It was, according to most contemporary critics, the deleted first (or second) chapter from the original manuscript and the one which gave the volume its name,: 325 but which the original publishers deemed unnecessary to the overall story.'
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Dracula's Guest' follows an unnamed Englishman traveller as he wanders around before leaving for Transylvania. It is and the young Englishman foolishly leaves his hotel, in spite of the coachman's warnings, and wanders through a dense forest alone.
Along the way, he feels that he is being watched by a tall and thin stranger (possibly Count Dracula).The short story climaxes in an old graveyard where the Englishman, caught in a blizzard, takes refuge in the marble tomb of 'Countess Dolingen of Gratz'. Within the tomb, he sees the Countess—apparently asleep and healthy—but before he can investigate further, a mysterious force throws him clear of the tomb.
A lightning bolt then strikes the tomb, destroying it and incinerating the undead screaming countess. The Englishman then loses consciousness. He awakens to find a 'gigantic' wolf lying on his chest and licking at his throat; however, the wolf merely keeps him warm and protects him until help arrives.When the Englishman is finally taken back to his hotel, a telegram awaits him from his expectant host Dracula, with a warning about 'dangers from snow and wolves and night'.
The Swedish scholar Rickard Berghorn noted that the description of the blonde countess in Dracula's Guest closely resembled the description of Josephine in the, which he used to argue that the countess and Josephine were meant to be the same character. Powers of Darkness. As in the.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, produced in in 1921. The now-, however, was not an adaptation of Stoker's novel, but featured an original story.' S unauthorised film adaptation was released in 1922, and the popularity of the novel increased considerably, owing to an attempt by Stoker's widow to have the film removed from public circulation. Prana Film, the production company, had been unable to obtain permission to adapt the story from Bram's widow, so screenwriter was told to alter numerous details to avoid legal trouble. Galeen transplanted the action of the story from 1890s England to 1830s Germany and reworked several characters, dropping some (such as Lucy and all three of her suitors), and renaming others (Dracula became, Jonathan Harker became Thomas Hutter, Mina became Ellen, and so on).
This attempt failed to avoid a court case, however; Florence Stoker sued Prana Film, and all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed. However, the company was bankrupt, and Stoker only recovered her legal fees in damages. Some copies survived and found their way into theatres. Eventually, Florence Stoker gave up the fight against public displays of the film.
Subsequent rereleases of the film have typically undone some of the changes, such as restoring the original character names (a practice also followed by in his 1979 remake of Murnau's film ). Florence Stoker licensed the story to playwright, whose toured England for several years before settling down in London. In 1927, American stage producer hired to revise Deane's script in advance of its American premiere.
Balderston significantly compressed the story, most notably consolidating or removing several characters. The Deane play and its Balderston revisions introduced an expanded role and history for Renfield, who now replaced Jonathan Harker as Dracula's solicitor in the first part of the story; combined and into a single character named Lucy (though both Mina and Lucy would appear in the subsequent film); and omitted both and entirely.
When the play premiered in New York, it was with in the title role, and with asroles which both actors (as well as as ) reprised for the English-language version of the 1931. The 1931 film was one of the most commercially successful adaptations of the story to date; it and the Deane/Balderston play that preceded it set the standard for film and television adaptations of the story, with the alterations to the novel becoming standard for later adaptations for decades to come. Universal Studios continued to feature the character of Dracula in many of their. As the title character in (1958)In 1958, British film company followed the success of its from the previous year with, released in the US as Horror of Dracula, directed.
Fisher's production featured as Dracula and 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 (with Cushing but not Lee) in 1974.
Christopher Lee also took on the role of Dracula in, a 1970 Spanish-Italian-German co-production notable for its adherence to the plot of the original novel. Playing the part of Renfield in that version was, who later played Dracula himself in 1979's Nosferatu the Vampyre.In 1977, the made, a 155-minute adaptation for television starring.
Later film adaptations include 's 1979, starring and inspired by the of the Deane/Hamilton play, and 's 1992, starring. The character of Count Dracula has remained popular over the years, and many films have used the character as a villain, while others have named him in their titles, including. Davison, Carol Margaret (1997). Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking Through the Century, 1897–1997.
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Hughes, William. Beyond Dracula: Bram Stoker's Fiction and its Cultural Contexts (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000). McNally, Raymond T. & Florescu, Radu. In Search of Dracula.
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Dracula: Sense & Nonsense. Desert Island Books, 2006. Schaffer, Talia. A Wilde Desire Took Me: the Homoerotic History of Dracula, in: ELH – Volume 61, Number 2 (1994), pp. 381–425. Senf, Carol.
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