The Vampire And Dracula

The first book, or story, exclusively regarding vampires was written by John Polidori and published in 1816.  The novella, The Vampyre, was written at the same time as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and was written at the same Lake Geneva estate, under the same challenge.  The novella was originally attributed to Lord Byron, but was later acknowledged as the effort of Polidori.  The Vampyre was a great success, and in 1871 Sheridan Le Fanu published Carmilla, the story of a lesbian vampire, which was even more popular.  Then a series of Penny Dreadfuls was introduced, written by James Malcolm Rymer, about Varney the Vampire.  The Victorian society of London consumed all of these gothic horror stories with glee.
   In 1897, Bram (short for Abraham) Stoker published the novel Dracula.  Bram was a long-time friend of Oscar Wilde, and both men had paid suit to Florence Balcombe.  Florence chose to marry Stoker, a solid accountant with a good family.  Bram was attracted to many men, including Walt Whitman, and his friend and employer, Shakespearean actor Sir Henry Irving.  While employed as the business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, Stoker supplemented his income by writing quite a few novels between 1878 and 1898.  And, during his life-time, while Dracula sold well, it was not considered a work of note.  After Oscar Wilde's trial and sentencing for indecency and sodomy in May of 1895, Stoker became, increment by increment, a violent homophobe.  Bram Stoker died in 1912, leaving his wife Florence and son Irving Noel Thornley Stoker, nicely well off.
  One of the settings of Dracula is the village of Whitby, which is where Stoker and his family spent the summer holidays.  While there, he read and took notes from an 1885 essay, written by Emily Gerard, titled "Transylvania Superstitions."  Another of his sources was the 1820 edition of An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia written by British Consul William Wilkenson, who was posted there - it was here that Stoker ran across the name of Vlad II Dracul, who took his surname from a chivalric Order that he joined in 1431.  The Order of the Dragon (Dracul in the Wallachian language) was instituted by Sigismund of Luxemborg, then King of Hungary, as an honor for aristocrats to achieve as a supporter of Christianity and as a defender of the Empire against the Ottoman Turks.  When Vlad II became the leader of Wallachia, he always wore his Order of the Dragon medal, and had his coins stamped with a dragon.  His son, Vlad III, was also known as Vlad Dracula (son of the dragon), and Vlad Tepes (of the Stakes - or, in today's terms, the Impaler).  It is not known how much Stoker knew of the Dracul father and son - but in his journals and notes, one may find the entry, "Dracula in the Wallachian language means DEVIL."  (The capitalization is Stoker's.)  In the book itself, Dracula is referred to as a man who fought the Turks.
   It is thought that Stoker might have used any number of old castles or ruins found in Romania as his setting for Dracula's castle.  There were multiple books out at that time that had photographs, engravings and paintings of older castles in the mountains, and some even suppose that the castle is one Bram Stoker visited in England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales.  Bram Stoker was a man of many layers, and he successfully hid himself quite well.