Dracula's Guest
About this ebook
In “Dracula’s Guest,” an unnamed Englishman journeys by carriage into the countryside from his hotel in Munich to take in some of the local scenery. On the journey, his driver warns him of the dangers of Walpurgis Night only hours away, a time in which demons and ghosts are rumored to roam the land. Stopping near an abandoned village, the Englishman ignores his driver’s unease and, sending the carriage back to Munich, makes his way into the hills alone. Lost in the dark, a sudden appearance of moonlight reveals his eerie surroundings—a dark and dreary cemetery. As a storm abruptly begins, he takes shelter in the doorway of a tomb, accidentally disturbing the entrance to reveal, at its center, the body of a beautiful, sleeping woman. In “The Judge’s House,” a scholar on holiday in a seaside town spends the night in a mysterious home, despite the warnings of locals who beg him not to stay at such a place. Dracula’s Guest compiles nine works of short fiction by Bram Stoker, the secretive and vastly underrated creator of Dracula, one of history’s greatest villains.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Guest is a classic of Irish literature reimagined for modern readers.
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About the author
Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was an Irish novelist. Born in Dublin, Stoker suffered from an unknown illness as a young boy before entering school at the age of seven. He would later remark that the time he spent bedridden enabled him to cultivate his imagination, contributing to his later success as a writer. He attended Trinity College, Dublin from 1864, graduating with a BA before returning to obtain an MA in 1875. After university, he worked as a theatre critic, writing a positive review of acclaimed Victorian actor Henry Irving’s production of Hamlet that would spark a lifelong friendship and working relationship between them. In 1878, Stoker married Florence Balcombe before moving to London, where he would work for the next 27 years as business manager of Irving’s influential Lyceum Theatre. Between his work in London and travels abroad with Irving, Stoker befriended such artists as Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Hall Caine, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1895, having published several works of fiction and nonfiction, Stoker began writing his masterpiece Dracula (1897) while vacationing at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in Cruden Bay, Scotland. Stoker continued to write fiction for the rest of his life, achieving moderate success as a novelist. Known more for his association with London theatre during his life, his reputation as an artist has grown since his death, aided in part by film and television adaptations of Dracula, the enduring popularity of the horror genre, and abundant interest in his work from readers and scholars around the world.
