Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula
Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula
"DRACULA in Wallachian language means DEVIL."
It’s as though Bram Stoker (1847-1912) wrote the story himself—of how his notes were discovered a year after his death in a Pennsylvania homestead barn. There, a family found three trunks: one contained clothes, the second held a bundle of papers, a third revealed desiccated rat corpses.
The bundle of papers proved to be Stoker’s working notes for Dracula (1897), originally titled “The Un-Dead”.
Finally, in 2008, Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller published a facsimile of the papers found in the trunk, thus granting us a special glimpse into Stoker’s working habits and thoughts while composing what has become the quintessential vampire story.
As Halloween approaches, let’s open that musty trunk and browse the notes Stoker took as he prepared to write the world’s most famous vampire story.
Developing Dracula
During his lifetime, Stoker was known not as the author of Dracula, but as the actor Henry Irving’s close friend and business manager for Irving’s Lyceum Theater.
In his spare time, Stoker wrote. And, for seven years, he worked on his vampire story, pouring over were-wolf fables, histories of Wallachia, and tales of vampires.
Stoker did not invent that blood-thirsty figure of horror (and sometimes sexual desire1) that we know as the vampire. However, he consolidated many of the characteristics we’ve come to associate with vampires into Count Dracula. Here are a few recognizable traits Stoker notes as he prepared to write the novel:
Vampire
Memo (1)
no looking glasses in Count’s house
never can see himself reflected in one—no shadow?
lights arranged to give no shadow
never eats nor drinks
carried or led over threshold
enormous strength
see in the dark
power of getting small or large
money always old gold—traced to Salzburg banking house….2
Stoker read everything he could about vampires. While traveling in the United States with Irving, Stoker cut-out the following article on the “strange superstition of long ago” which led frightened New Englanders to pierce suspected vampires’ chests with stakes:
…a stake was driven through the chest, and the heart, being taken out, was either burned or chopped into small pieces, for in this way only could a vampire be deprived of power to do mischief.3
Stoker’s research continued at The London Library, where he was a member during the seven years he spent researching and writing Dracula.4
Stoker’s Historical Research & Marginalia
Perhaps the most shocking thing I learned about Stoker is that he wrote in library books! Albeit, in pencil…but still!
After reading the facsimile edition of Stoker’s notes, Phillip Spedding, The London Library’s Development Director, discovered that many of the notes corresponded to pages with small marginalia in the library’s collection.5
For example, Stoker likely marked important passages with little crosses, such as this section from The Book of Were-Wolves.
He also took note of important page numbers, directing himself (or an assistant) to copy specific passages. In the following image, Stoker has circled the following directions:
Copy from 110 to p 121
Watch Spedding describe his findings while showing us the actual books Stoker worked from:
Spedding mentions An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia by William Wilkinson, the page opposite a reference to “Dracula” shows signs of having been earmarked.
While Stoker might have looked at London Library’s copy of the book, he took notes on it while vacationing in the seaside town of Whitby. He titles his notes with Whitby Library’s call number for the book:
…Whitby Library. 0.1097
“P. 19. DRACULA in Wallachian language means DEVIL. Wallachians were accustomed to give it as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous by courage, cruel actions or cunning.6
In fact, Stoker wrote much of Dracula while in Whitby and set many of the novel’s events in this seaside town, with its ancient graveyard and imposing abbey.
Stoker’s Interviews
While in Whitby, Stoker interviewed sailors and coast guards about the wreck of a Russian ship called “Dmitry” that would inspire Count Dracula’s fictional arrival in Whitby on the “Demeter.”
For example, one local coast guard told Stoker:
On 24 October, 1885 the Russian schooner “Dimietry” [sic] about 120 tons was sighted off Whitby about 2pm. Wind northeast Force 8 (fresh gale) strong sea on coast (cargo silver sand—from mouth of Danube) ran into harbour by pure chance avoiding rocks. The following is extract [sic] from the Log Book of the Coast Guard station.
Stoker attached a copy of the log book to this note.
The way Stoker assembled diverse papers in his notes recalls Dracula’s multi-media format, which includes the “log of the Demeter” and newspaper clippings, “pasted in Mina Murray’s journal,” which describes a mysterious dog that disappeared from the ship (of course, it was Dracula in animal form).
Stoker also wandered Whitby’s graveyard with his notebook to record tombstone engravings.
These notes anticipate Mina’s tour of Whitby’s graveyard with the local named Mr. Swales, whose namesake appears in the penultimate gravestone noted on the above page.
As Stoker conversed with Whitby’s inhabitants, he took notes on the local dialect so he could accurately depict it in his novel.
Thus, we find Mr. Swales telling Mina, “I must gang ageeanwards home now, Miss,” in Chapter 6.
There’s more to say about Stoker’s process for planning and drafting Dracula, but that will have to wait for this week’s postscript.
Notes on Stoker’s Notes
Great novels often rely on great research: When we think of the fantastical world of Dracula, it’s easy to forget that so much of it is based on diligent historical research. While it is certainly not a novel in the realist tradition, Dracula contains quite a lot that is inspired by reality.
Combine Marginalia with Transcribing Quotes: Stoker would mark an interesting book section with a penciled cross. Then, he’d transcribe the section with pen and paper or with the newest technology of his day: the typewriter.
Embrace New Technology: Dracula highlights the 19th-century’s newest technologies. Heroes of the novel leverage phonograph recordings, telegrams, and typed diaries to defeat the supernatural Count. Stoker also used these technologies. I wonder if, as he punched letters onto the page while typing Dracula, Stoker saw an analogy with the Vampire’s bite-marks? This is a connection that the late media theorist Friedrich Kittler explored in Discourse Networks 1800/1900.
Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I would love to know your thoughts.
Yours in note-taking,
P.S.
Paid subscribers, look for more on Stoker’s writing process later this week.
P.P.S.
Want more monsters? Check out Noted’s Halloween post from last year:
While the vampire has always been a figure of transgressive sexuality, it is only recently that the vampire has become a sexy, desirable figure, (in the tradition of Twilight).
Stoker, Bram, et al. Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition. McFarland & Company, 2013, p.19.
Quoted in Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula, p. 189.
Before public libraries were widespread, middle-class readers paid for subscriptions to private libraries. Learn more here.
“The Books That Made Dracula.” The London Library, 2018.
Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula, p.244.
I’m still stuck on the trunkful of desiccated rat corpses.
I’m intrigued by this list from the news clipping about New Englanders digging up the corpses of family members and burning them. Rural New Englanders would have been visited by: “the book agent, the chromo peddler, and the patent medicine man.” What is a chromo peddler? This article made me think of the character in Paulette Jules’ News of the World. I can imagine a news peddler enthralling audiences with these accounts. Great stuff!