Kanlaon

“Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there might be a sudden storm.  But I am sure you will not be late.” Here he smiled and added, “for you know what night it is.”

— from the Prologue to Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Do dear blog readers know that Bram Stoker was born in Dublin?

Self only found out when she was in Ireland, earlier this year.

Self is still in Angela’s home in Chicago.

One of the books she found here is Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Self found it in the room she has been staying in, the room belonging to Angela’s eldest, currenly an undergrad at USC)

Because this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge theme is COVER ART, here’s a picture of the book cover:

Cover Art: DRACULA by Bram Stoker, Illustrated by Edward Gorey

And here’s a bit from the book’s Introduction, written by Marvin Kaye:

Dracula is a late flowering of gothic literature, with its formidable array of proud and iniquitous Counts, its ruined castles, its secrets; natural, supernatural, and unnatural.  Certainly, though its expression is more restrained, Stoker’s profane vision wells up from the same dark regions that spawned M. G. Lewis’s fallen Capuchin clergyman in The Monk. Analogies also can be drawn between Stoker’s three-century-old vampire and Charles Maturin’s soul-vampire, Melmoth the Wanderer. But Dracula is more than just a Gothic retread. It is the quintessential reworking and culmination of devices and techniques common to the subgenre of vampire fiction.

Vampire stories share common elements. Almost by definition, they must have an innocent victim or victims menaced by a predatory villain, though sometimes, as in J. Sheridan LeFanu’s novella Carmilla, the vampire is initially winsomely appealing.  The victims are typically numerous, though there is usually only one vampire. Dracula bends this latter convention, but not by much. The Count dominates the three “sister” vampires, just as he does the action.

Fascinating.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.