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octavia_cade's review
2.0
This, like the Histories of Middle-earth, reminds me of law and sausages. Which is disappointing, as I'm a huge fan of Dracula and wanted to find out more, but there's a lot of repetition here and some of the critical stuff just isn't put together very well.
Basically, the idea of the book is that some of Stoker's notes were discovered, notes he made while researching and writing Dracula, and they've been transcribed and collated here, with some attempt at editorial footnotes - some of these are more helpful than others. And the whole should be interesting, but honestly... is anyone really that interested in train timetables jotted down on scrap paper? Or the permutations of name that Peter Hawkins went through before Stoker finally decided? I know that I am not. Still, if my own academic focus were on the development of the book rather than the final story I might get some mild use out of it, so no real problems there.
As I said, the way the book's put together is a bigger problem. There's a huge amount of repetition, and a number of quotes from various critics/academics turn up more than once. (If I did this in my papers, peer-review would shred me.) The text also appears to have the odd mistake. It claims, for instance, that Stoker's grandson was Noel Dobbs, and that he was named for his father (Stoker's only child was a son called Noel). Granted I do not know the family tree, but a son named for his father should share the same last name, right? So I looked it up, and there's a number of sources saying Dobbs is the great-grandson of Stoker, and therefore named for his grandfather Noel. Which, if true, seems petty and picky to bring up, but also raises questions in me, at least, as to the accuracy of the rest of the information. Especially as parts of the book disagree with each other. The first appendix, for instance, gives a timeline which states that in 1897 Whitworth Jones becomes the first actor to play the Count (i.e. Dracula), but earlier the book describes an 1897 production - which occurred before Jones came to work at the playhouse involved, in which said Count was played, the editors suppose, by T. Arthur Jones. Similarly, the book argues more than once that Stoker was the first author to show a vampire transforming into a bat, while that same appendix-timeline refers to Burton's Vikram and the Vampire (1870) and Georges Méliès Le Manoir du Diable (1896 - aka The Haunted Castle), both of which came out before Stoker's masterpiece in 1897, and both of which had a bat-link in them, as I understand it. Now you could cavil that both Burton and Méliès were not referring to vampires as we understand them today, but that seems rather a circular argument, as vampires-as-we-understand-them-today are heavily influenced by Stoker... and it also takes away from the fact that B&M have been understood and/or interpreted as vampire narratives by other sources. The Kevin Dodd paper, "Blood Suckers Most Cruel: The Vampire and the Bat In and Before Dracula" might be helpful here. It led me to the 1863 short story by William Kingston, which has vampire-women transforming into bats - Kingston is not referenced in Drafts of Dracula, but his story was collected by one of the editors in one of his other books, Vintage Vampire Stories, published in 2011 (eight years before Drafts of Dracula) so he should have been aware of that particular precedent.
One to skim over, unless you're rabid in your fandom, I think.
Basically, the idea of the book is that some of Stoker's notes were discovered, notes he made while researching and writing Dracula, and they've been transcribed and collated here, with some attempt at editorial footnotes - some of these are more helpful than others. And the whole should be interesting, but honestly... is anyone really that interested in train timetables jotted down on scrap paper? Or the permutations of name that Peter Hawkins went through before Stoker finally decided? I know that I am not. Still, if my own academic focus were on the development of the book rather than the final story I might get some mild use out of it, so no real problems there.
As I said, the way the book's put together is a bigger problem. There's a huge amount of repetition, and a number of quotes from various critics/academics turn up more than once. (If I did this in my papers, peer-review would shred me.) The text also appears to have the odd mistake. It claims, for instance, that Stoker's grandson was Noel Dobbs, and that he was named for his father (Stoker's only child was a son called Noel). Granted I do not know the family tree, but a son named for his father should share the same last name, right? So I looked it up, and there's a number of sources saying Dobbs is the great-grandson of Stoker, and therefore named for his grandfather Noel. Which, if true, seems petty and picky to bring up, but also raises questions in me, at least, as to the accuracy of the rest of the information. Especially as parts of the book disagree with each other. The first appendix, for instance, gives a timeline which states that in 1897 Whitworth Jones becomes the first actor to play the Count (i.e. Dracula), but earlier the book describes an 1897 production - which occurred before Jones came to work at the playhouse involved, in which said Count was played, the editors suppose, by T. Arthur Jones. Similarly, the book argues more than once that Stoker was the first author to show a vampire transforming into a bat, while that same appendix-timeline refers to Burton's Vikram and the Vampire (1870) and Georges Méliès Le Manoir du Diable (1896 - aka The Haunted Castle), both of which came out before Stoker's masterpiece in 1897, and both of which had a bat-link in them, as I understand it. Now you could cavil that both Burton and Méliès were not referring to vampires as we understand them today, but that seems rather a circular argument, as vampires-as-we-understand-them-today are heavily influenced by Stoker... and it also takes away from the fact that B&M have been understood and/or interpreted as vampire narratives by other sources. The Kevin Dodd paper, "Blood Suckers Most Cruel: The Vampire and the Bat In and Before Dracula" might be helpful here. It led me to the 1863 short story by William Kingston, which has vampire-women transforming into bats - Kingston is not referenced in Drafts of Dracula, but his story was collected by one of the editors in one of his other books, Vintage Vampire Stories, published in 2011 (eight years before Drafts of Dracula) so he should have been aware of that particular precedent.
One to skim over, unless you're rabid in your fandom, I think.
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