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Who Was Dracula?: Bram Stoker's Trail Of Blood (2013)

by Jim Steinmeyer(Favorite Author)

3.27 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

014242188X (ISBN13: 9780142421888)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Tarcher

review 1: This book was truly an eye opener. I had never taken Stoker's inspiration for the character of Dracula into consideration, but it seems that Stoker amassed inspiration for his greatest creation from many different sources. Fascinating book & a fascinating biography of Bram Stoker & the men behind Dracula- Henry Irving, Oscar Wilde, Jack the Ripper & Walt Whitman. The character Dracula, when seen through the lens of characters that Stoker knew & called on to inspire Dracula, makes sense & I can see the bits of each man in the portrayal of Dracula.
review 2: For the majority of this book I actually would have rated it higher, however, with the addition of Oscar Wilde, my opinion changed drastically. I'm not going to say I'm a know it all about Oscar Wilde, beca... moreuse I don't, but I was puzzled by things stated in the book. I decided to look in the back for references used for his information. From all the biographies and scholarly books written and including the collection of Oscar Wilde letters only three books were used, well only two as Fanny Moyle's book is mostly about Constance Wilde. Richard Ellmann's biography is actually highly suspect for it's gross inaccuracies and the other was Neil McKenna's book, which is fine I'm sure but not everything there is 100% fool proof. My biggest objection was not only were the chapters about Oscar Wilde in the book not given full credit but the idea that Dracula sated on blood would resemble Oscar Wilde in any way. There have been descriptions used to describe Wilde in the late 1890s as looking distinctly repulsive, however, photographs from this period argue against this. I am aware that the photos are in black and white, but there is nothing in his visage that is in the least grotesque or even overweight for his height and size. I have read Dracula twice and I can't find as much sensationalism of sensuality as others have made out and apart from a shared gothic genre I don't believe any story written influenced Bram Stoker's work. While Wilde's trials were scandalous for the period and was in the media every day for the length of both trials I thought it was unnecessary to reproduce even a fraction of the trials themselves. Indeed from what I have gathered from other books the relationship to the two literary figures had was almost nonexistent. When the reception of Dracula has been mentioned else where the reviews were generally negative of the book, the author here failed to reproduce both kinds of critique for the book. It seems that the addition of Oscar Wilde didn't serve any purpose to further the question of whom was behind the character of Dracula or add to it any shape or form. If Stoker had been a thorough researcher (it is not clear by this book if he was or not) then the character of Dracula would have been drawn largely from the folklore of Europe. The examples cited of how Oscar Wilde's life from the 1890s influenced Dracula is fanciful at best. It was rather disappointing that this book was not as well thought up as it could have been. Bela Lugosi who transformed the role and made sure, not consciously, that the story of Dracula continued down the ages was brushed over and curiously Francis Ford Cappola's film was not even mentioned, even though critics have claimed that his interpretation has been the closest to the actual book. In this book we are also no closer to knowing the woman of Florence Stoker, nee Balcombe, how she felt about the book and how she managed to live with the author of Dracula. Nor do we really see how this odd book did creep under censorship restrictions. less

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