Craig Zablo

Joy Lanzendorfer and Mental_Floss present 10 Blood-Curdling Facts About Dracula.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. VAMPIRES SHARE A HISTORY WITH FRANKENSTEIN.
In 1816, on a gloomy day in Lake Geneva, Lord Byron proposed a ghost story contest that led to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein. It was also the birth of The Vampyre by John Polidori, he first-ever vampire story written in English. Polidori was Byron’s personal physician and he may have based his aristocratic bloodsucker on his patient—which would make Lord Byron the basis for the bulk of vampire depictions that followed. (Other accounts say that Polidori stole a fragment of fiction that Byron wrote and used it in his story.) In any case, The Vampyreinfluenced Varney the Vampire, a popular penny dreadful from the 1840s, and Carmilla, a novella about a lesbian vampire from the 1870s, and, of course, Stoker.

3. STOKER STARTED WRITING DRACULA RIGHT AFTER JACK THE RIPPER.
Stoker began Dracula in 1890, two years after Jack the Ripper terrorized London. The lurid atmosphere these crimes produced made their way into Stoker’s novel, which was confirmed in the 1901 preface to the Icelandic edition of Dracula. Stoker’s reference links the two frightening figures in such a way that raises more questions than provides answers, but no doubt confirms the terrifying real-life influence on his fictional world.

9. IT WAS ALMOST CALLED THE UNDEAD.

Amandajm, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

The working title of the novel was The Dead Un-Dead, which was later shortened to The Undead. Then, right before it was published, Stoker changed the title once more to Dracula. What’s in a name? Well, it’s tough to say. Upon release, Dracula got good reviews, but it was slow to sell, and by the end of his life, Stoker was so poor that he had to ask for a compassionate grant from the Royal Literary Fund. The Gothic tale didn’t become the legend it is today until film adaptations began popping up during the 20th century.