This 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is famous for introducing us to the ominous vampire Count Dracula. Young English solicitor Jonathan Harker finds himself at the center of a series of horrifying incidents during a business trip to Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania where he is attacked by three phantom women,...

This 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is famous for introducing us to the ominous vampire Count Dracula. Young English solicitor Jonathan Harker finds himself at the center of a series of horrifying incidents during a business trip to Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania where he is attacked by three phantom women, observes the Count's transformation from human to bat form, and discovers puncture wounds on his own neck that seem to have been made by teeth. Escaping from Dracula's grim fortress and returning home he is confronted with a friend's strange illness involving sleepwalking, inexplicable blood loss and mysterious throat wounds. This initiates a frantic vampire hunt as it becomes clear that Dracula has come to England in search of new blood.

Professor Abraham Van Helsing leads the hunt for Dracula following him back to Transylvania where the vampire flees to avoid capture. The determined search party finds him buried in a box of dirt and promptly cuts off his head and stabs him through his heart.

This spellbinding novel touches on many themes including the role of women in Victorian society, sexual conventions, immigration, colonialism, and post-colonialism, while it has also been assigned to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, he defined its modern form and the supernatural appeal of his novel continues to spawn many theatrical, film and television interpretations more than a century after its initial publication.