Term Paper on "Dracula and Dracula's Guest - Abraham ("Bram"

Term Paper 3 pages (1368 words) Sources: 3 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Dracula and Dracula's Guest - Abraham ("Bram") Stoker

Should Dracula's Guest be considered a missing chapter from Dracula, or a short story in its own right? The research conducted by this writer indicates that Dracula's Guest is a "missing chapter" from Dracula, and by virtue of its stand-alone situation, it has also become a generally well-received short story in its own right. I don't mean to duck the assigned question (either or), so this is not opinion; the literary and historic facts cry out for the truth, and the truth is, myriad sources indicate it was excised from the original manuscript. And yet there it is as a paperback on Amazon.com and on other book-selling sites. Technically then, Dracula's Guest is both absent from the novel, and is a short story. For the purposes of this paper, it will be seen as a short story on it's own merits, but the editorial and technical circumstances of Dracula's Guest are certainly germane to any discussion of Bram Stoker, and his wife.

Meanwhile, on page 1 of the paperback Dracula's Guest (Kessinger Publishing 2004), under the title, Dracula's Guest, is the following: "Note: DRACULA'S GUEST was excised from the original DRACULA MSS by his publisher because of the length of the original book MSS. It was published as a short story in 1914, two years after Stoker's death. Enjoy!"

It should also be mentioned that Dracula's Guest is not only a short story, but in Amazon.com's Kessinger publication, mentioned in the paragraph above, Dracula's Guest is a book of short stories by Stoker. There are 8 short stories in addition to Dracula's Guest in the book.

In the e-book version of the short story, Dracula's Guest (www.classic-literature.co.uk),the online publisher provides a Preface attributed to the pen of Bram Stoker's wife, Florence Bram Stoker (which is seen frequently during research on the issue at hand); it is as follows:

few months before the lamented death of my husband -- I might say even as the shadow of death was over him -- he planned three series of short stories for publication, and the present volume is one of them. To his original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It was originally excised owing to the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband's most remarkable work. The other stories have already been published in English and American periodicals. Had my husband lived longer, he might have seen fit to revise this work, which is mainly from the earlier years of his strenuous life. But, as fate has entrusted to me the issuing of it, I consider it fitting and proper to let it go forth practically as it was left by him."

FLORENCE BRAM STOKER

Having provided reasonably solid evidence that Dracula's Guest was omitted from the author's book Dracula, albeit the specific reasons why it was omitted are elusive, it is a strategy worth pursuing to review approaches to the short story in juxtaposition with the novel itself, to see how it may have fit in. The story is worthy, although not as sexy nor as dramatic as the novel. While it sets the tone for the novel, it certainly is breathlessly frightening on its own.

In some critical reviews of Dracula and Dracula's Guest, scholars and academics have been less than exuberant in their praise of the works, although there are clues in older reviews that provide possible answers as to why Dracula's Guest was dropped from the original manuscript. Critic Montague Summers, writing in 1928, states that when the book Dracula is viewed "from a purely literary point of approach, it must be acknowledged that there is much careless writing..." (Summers 1928). [Is it possible that what Summers saw as "careless" was actually due to the epistolary - diary entries, telegrams, etc. - structure of the novel?

There are many pages, Summers continued, that "...could have been compressed and something revised with considerable profit." Moreover, though the characters tend to be "labels rather than… READ MORE

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