Dracula: The Connoisseur's Guide

by Leonard Wolf

In the 100 years since its publication, Bram Stoker's Dracula has never been out of print.  Once introduced to the world by the silent film classic Nosferatu in 1921, Dracula became an enduring icon of fear, forever immortalized as a frightful embodiment of evil and forbidden sexuality.

Now, in this fascinating and entertaining account, Wolf examines the various interpretations of the immortal vampire in print, film, television, theater, and literature, including an extensive outline of Bram Stoker's life and his literary masterpiece, Dracula .  Wolf explains how the story of a sexually sadistic undead creature/man who feeds on blood worked its way into mainstream society and how it is now used as a ubiquitous marketing tool for products from hair tonic to children's breakfast cereal.

The sourcebook

* An exploration and the history of vampire myths, including the tale of Vlad the Impaler
* An overview of vampire films from the silent classic Nosferatu to Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula
* A discussion of vampire bats and the lore of blood
* A complete bibliography, filmography with movie stills, telefilmography, and a theater chronology
* Maps of Transylvania, London, and Whitby
* A calendar to coincide with the "real time" actions of Bram Stoker's Dracula, complete with sunrise and sunset times as well as the all-important phases of the moon
* And much more...

Genres: Vampires, Nonfiction, Horror

321 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 1997

Reviews

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book, but I have some disagreements with Wolf's conclusions, especially when it comes to Bram Stoker. The bibliography and filmography are very useful tools.

[Josje · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the book was very informative and provides a lot of background information concerning the novel Dracula and the vampire, I felt that at time Leonard Wolf was too adamant at times. I felt that he was really trying to convince the reader that his view point was the only accurate one, while it left me doubting whether he wasn't reading too much into it. Yet overall I find that this book gives you a good overview of the works that influenced Dracula and its 'descendants'.

[Martyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a great achievement to have all of this research in one place, although I'm not sure that all of it was necessary, but the writing got to be a little too contradictory and misleading and lot too Freudian for my liking.

[Yasmin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it in places, but not in others. Once again, I don't know how many times this will make or how many will be in the future, Oscar Wilde didn't die of syphilis ! He died of cerebral meningitis! The person who suggested he died of syphilis did have to retract that from the next edition in his book, Richard Ellmann. The doctors had written it as cerebral meningitis and his grandson Merlin Holland is in agreement. I know the book I am reading is over ten years old, but I had hoped even for a book written in 1997 we would be beyond this as readers and writers! For that mention alone of erroneous error I would have left the book flat. However, Leonard Wolf does write well. Although for the most part it is one of those books that is a dissection. Dissect another book for all that it is worth, or not, or percived in the imagination. I always find difficulty reading books that are about a dissection of another, it's like art connoisseur who can make a long critical judgement on one painting! That may go to show I'm no intellectual. In fact when I read Bram Stoker's Dracula I didn't pick up on any shadowy homoerotic references or any hint of women's sexuality. To me it was a story about a vampire that did have a curious prefrence for women but a lot of books in that period were like that. Of course if there were shadowy homoerotic references I don't imagine anyone in the Victorian Era missed it! These are the same people that called Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray preverse and his supposed refrences (which I can't find really) were no more obvious that Bram Stoker's. If Leonard Wolf is to believed then Bram Stoker's were more obvious and a lot more explicate! So how this book didn't get Bram Stoker into trouble is a mystery to me! That's the hypocrisy of the Victorian Age and in a lot of ways in our own period. Even with his own words Leonard Wolf is saying how we view the more disturbing side of our natures-or evil-is no different then how we viewed that side a hundred years ago and exactly the same in how we view our sexuality in print and in more private daily lives. To read a "gothic" book is to innocently explore that secret nature that no one else but ourselves dares to look at. But to read a real life "gothic" account we would automatically known the difference and be suitably outraged. Would we? In the company of others yes many would vocally complain of a real life story of murder and mayhem but what would that person really feel? The persons that purposefully harm and kill others are not just the occasional odd ball that suddenly appears as if brought up especially from the bowels of hell. The person could be at work with the non murderers and rapists or could be a next door neighbour that would out loud complain about the "evil" found in a newspaper but inside themself maybe whispering a different kind of reply. How far would a person take being titulated by a jolly good horror story/movie and not want a similar kind of titulation outside of that fantasy world? Thanks to technology indeed a person can go a lot further with computer games and as Leonard Wolf pointed out enough times one can achieve a sort of sexual horror story supposedly confined to the bedroom with a willing partner or two or three or...It's easy enough all a person apparently as to do is say I want to and hang everything and everyone else I don't care about them! How easy that is to reside in an entirely selfish existence where one's own life and importance is the only thing that counts in this world. Those people may be as yet right. But I'm not going to conform to that. Another glaring omission is the other two vampire movies Bela Lugosi was in was Mark of the Vampire (1936) and The Return of the Vampire (1944), yes we shouldn't advertise the movies he was most typecast in-monsters and other like minded evil doers-however, without Bela Lugosi's version of the vampire on the big screen I don't think anyone would turn to the book as many times as they have since it's first publication and I don't think we would have all the vampire movies stories that we have (for better or for worse!)and his Dracula may not be to the letter of Bram Stoker's Dracula but at least Bela Lugosi brought a man that was both surreal and real enough to believe in. For all the hamminess of the 1931 movie Bela Lugosi should have the gifted credit of bring Dracula into our daily lives as someone or something to believe in. I also agree that Dracula is a blessing and a curse.

[Mario Cruz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si uno quiere tener un entendimiento profundo sobre el mundo mítico de los no muertos, el libro de Leonard Wolf es un excelente punto de partida pues cubre todos los temas que explican al mito de los vampiros desde diferentes perspectivas que resultan esenciales para entender las razones de porque los no-muertos son hoy en día un mito tan popular y vigente.

[Utmost Cookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and cool, a fun and thought-provoking read. Lots of cool features like beautiful illustrations, interviews with Dracula depicting directors and a calender to track the events of the Dracula novel day by day.