Today, Gothic Horror writ large is either forgotten, treated as an artifact whose best literary features have been absorbed by other forms of genre fiction, or dismissed as an antiquated and socially regressive fictional universe full of parodical and cliché tropes. Unfortunately, despite the ubiquity of references to early works of Gothic horror like Dracula and the earlier, but no less influential Frankenstein, the genre both books populated has curiously ended up with a stake through its heart. Indeed, Dracula’s legacy has been spread over more than a century, and time remains on its side. Instead, every modern vampire, from Kurt Barlow of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, to Lestat in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, to even Stephanie Meyer’s Edward Cullen in Twilight, make some nod or other to Count Dracula. However, when authors search for a model for their vampires of today, it is not Polidori’s Lord Ruthven that they turn to first. Ironically, Dracula was far from the first novel to place a vampire in a modern setting, nor even to depict him as a suave, darkly fascinating aristocrat: John Polidori’s The Vampyre predated Stoker’s novel by almost a century.

But while Dracula the character was killed, Dracula the book remains immortal, with horror readers and authors of all eras since genuflecting to its example.

His revenge, and the count himself, were literally cut short. Those who have read the novel or watched one of its countless adaptations will know that the count’s threat was empty. In Bram Stoker’s iconic vampire novel Dracula, the eponymous count warns his pursuers, “My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side.”

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