Dracula Facts for Kids

Portrait of Sir Henry Irving

Dracula is a horror novel written by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. Bram Stoker published the novel in England in 1897. The character 'Dracula' may have been based in part on Sir Henry Irving (who was an actor and friend of Bram Stoker) and on Vlad III the Impaler (a Romanian king). The story is about a vampire called Dracula. A vampire is a kind of monster associated with death and the Devil.

Plot
Ideas for the story
Influence
Most famous adaptations of Dracula
Images for kids
See also

Plot

A young solicitor (a type of lawyer) Jonathan Harker goes to the country Transylvania to sell a house in England to a nobleman named Dracula. After living in the castle for a week, he realizes that Dracula is a vampire. Dracula traps Harker in his castle with three other vampire women (who are called his brides) and goes to England, by hiding on a ship and killing the crew. When he gets to England, he bites a young woman called Lucy Westenra and turns her into a vampire. Lucy is then killed by Abraham van Helsing (a medical doctor) and the other characters in the book. Then Dracula bites Jonathan's wife Mina. The other characters try to defeat Dracula, by chasing him back to Transylvania and killing him.

Ideas for the story

People have written about where Stoker got his ideas for the Dracula story. It has been said that Stoker's mother Charlotte telling him of the events of the terrible cholera plague in Sligo, Ireland may have given him some ideas. These included:

Doctors trying to stop people dying and then being killed.
Smells and mists associated with terrible things.
Roman Catholic priests bravely fighting the terrible things.
People being buried when they were not dead and some not dying.

The idea of blood may have come from Bram's early years when he was unheathly and in bed all the time and doctors may have tried bleeding him to make him healthly.

Ideas for the person of Dracula may have been taken from Henry Irving. Stoker worked for Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in London for 30 years.

Influence

Dracula was not the first piece of literature to depict vampires, but the novel has nonetheless come to dominate both popular and scholarly treatments of vampire fiction. Count Dracula is the first character to come to mind when people discuss vampires.

Bats had been associated with vampires before Dracula as a result of the vampire bat's existence—for example, Varney the Vampire (1847) included an image of a bat on its cover illustration. But Stoker deepened the association by making Dracula able to transform into one. That was, in turn, quickly taken up by film studios looking for opportunities to use special effects.

Adaptations of the novel and its characters have contributed to its enduring popularity.

Most famous adaptations of Dracula

1922, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror). First adaptation of the novel. Directed by F. W. Murnau. Max Schreck has the role of Count Orlok. The movie director could not get permission to use the actual story from Stoker's widow, who ordered many copies of the movie to be destroyed after its release.
1931, Dracula. Horror, directed by Tod Browning and starring Béla Lugosi as Dracula.
1958, Horror of Dracula. Horror, stars Christopher Lee as Count Dracula.
1979, Dracula. Horror, stars Frank Langella as Dracula.
1979, Love at First Bite. Comedy, stars George Hamilton as Count Vladimir Dracula.
1992, Bram Stoker's Dracula. Horror, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gary Oldman as Dracula.
Dracula: Dead and Loving it. Comedy, directed by Mel Brooks and starring Leslie Nielsen as Count Dracula.
Van Helsing is a 2004 movie that has Hugh Jackman as the title character (Gabriel Van Helsing) and Richard Boxburgh as Count Vladislaus Dracula.
2014, Dracula Untold, directed by Gary Shore