46 Fun Facts About Dracula

In what year was Bram Stoker's novel Dracula first published?

Dracula was first published in 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company in London; a flawed US copyright filing later left the story in the American public domain.

Bram Stoker was born in which country?

Bram Stoker was born in Ireland, at Clontarf in November 1847, and spent his first seven years bedridden with an undiagnosed illness.

What was the novel's title on the printer's typescript before a last-minute change?

The printer's typescript was titled The Un-Dead; Stoker switched to Dracula only weeks before publication, so the contract with Constable carried the earlier name.

Stoker took the name 'Dracula' from William Wilkinson's 1820 history of which two principalities?

Stoker took the name from William Wilkinson's 1820 Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, whose footnote said Dracula meant devil in Wallachian.

In the novel, what is the name of the ship that carries Dracula and his boxes of earth to England?

The Demeter, a Russian schooner out of Varna, runs aground in a storm with its dead captain lashed to the wheel and a large dog leaping ashore.

In which English seaside town does Dracula come ashore?

Dracula lands at Whitby, the North Yorkshire port where Stoker holidayed in 1890; St Mary's church above the harbour is reached by 199 steps.

How is the novel Dracula structured?

Dracula is an epistolary novel told through letters, diaries and clippings, plus phonograph entries and a ship's log, so no single narrator sees the whole story.

In which city does Mina's fiancé end up delirious in hospital after escaping Dracula's castle?

Mina's fiancé is found in the Hospital of St Joseph and Ste Mary in Budapest; she travels there to nurse him and they marry before going home.

What does Dracula's asylum patient Renfield feed the flies he collects to?

Renfield feeds his flies to spiders, then the spiders to sparrows, hoping to absorb their lives; Dr Seward records the zoophagous habit in his phonograph diary.

Professor Abraham Van Helsing is from which country?

Van Helsing is from Holland; Dr Seward's old teacher practises in Amsterdam, speaks broken English, and brings consecrated wafers with him to fight the vampire.

In the novel, Dracula claims descent from which famous conqueror?

Dracula names Attila the Hun among his Székely ancestors, asking his guest what devil or witch was ever so great as Attila, 'whose blood is in these veins'.

Which of these features does Stoker give Dracula in the novel?

Stoker gives Dracula hair on his palms, with a long white moustache, pointed ears and sharp teeth; he casts no shadow and shows no reflection in a mirror.

In Stoker's novel, what effect does sunlight have on Dracula?

In the novel sunlight's effect on Dracula is that it weakens him but is not fatal: he walks London by day, and the fatal-sunlight rule came from the 1922 film Nosferatu.

Which actor-manager, Stoker's employer at the Lyceum Theatre, is widely agreed to have partly inspired Dracula?

Stoker befriended Irving after reviewing one of his performances, and became the Lyceum's business manager in 1878.

Stoker's wife Florence Balcombe had previously been courted by which famous writer?

Wilde was upset by her choice, but Stoker later renewed the friendship and visited him on the Continent after his disgrace.

Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 vampire novella, an acknowledged influence on Dracula, was called what?

Carmilla, serialised 1871–72, features a female vampire who preys on a lonely young woman and can take the form of a large black cat.

A 1901 Icelandic 'translation' of Dracula turned out to be based on a serialisation from which country?

Both versions were titled 'Powers of Darkness'; scholars only realised the Swedish original existed after rediscovering it in newspaper archives.

Vlad the Impaler ruled which principality, in three separate reigns?

Vlad III was Voivode of Wallachia in 1448, 1456–1462 and 1476, and was killed fighting the Ottomans around the turn of 1476–77.

Vlad's father earned the name 'Dracul' as a member of which knightly brotherhood?

Vlad II was inducted into the Order of the Dragon in 1431 by Sigismund of Luxemburg, who founded it to defend Christendom against the Ottomans; 'Dracula' means son of Dracul.

Which Ottoman sultan did Vlad try to capture in a night attack at Târgoviște in June 1462?

Mehmed II led the 1462 invasion after Vlad impaled his envoys Hamza Bey and Katabolinos; the night raid failed to reach the sultan's tent, and Vlad's brother Radu fought for the Ottomans.

According to historian Radu Florescu, in which Transylvanian Saxon town was Vlad born?

Florescu placed Vlad's birth in Sighișoara, where his father kept a residence in the 1430s; Vlad and his younger brother Radu were later held hostage by the Ottomans.

Bran Castle, marketed to tourists as 'Dracula's Castle', was built in 1377 by whom?

Local Saxons from Brașov built Bran Castle in 1377 under a royal privilege from Louis I; there is no evidence Stoker ever heard of it.

What is the renamed vampire villain called in the unauthorised 1922 film Nosferatu?

Max Schreck played Count Orlok; F. W. Murnau's unauthorised adaptation changed the names and moved the story to Wisborg to dodge Stoker's estate.

What did a court order after Florence Stoker sued the makers of Nosferatu for copyright infringement?

A German court ruled for Florence Stoker in July 1925 and ordered all copies destroyed, but prints already abroad survived and the film is regarded as a masterpiece.

Who directed the 1979 remake Nosferatu the Vampyre, starring Klaus Kinski?

Werner Herzog directed the 1979 film with Klaus Kinski as the Count and Isabelle Adjani as Lucy, shooting German and English versions back to back.

Universal's 1931 Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, was based directly on what?

Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston wrote the play, and Lugosi had already played the Count in it on Broadway.

The 1931 Dracula's sets were reused at night to shoot a simultaneous version in which language?

Carlos Villarías played the Count in the Spanish-language Drácula, shot at night on the same sets with Lupita Tovar, and running almost half an hour longer.

The music over the 1931 film's opening credits is an excerpt from which ballet?

The credits play Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake; the film has no original score, and Universal reused the same excerpt over the titles of The Mummy in 1932.

What was Bela Lugosi's surname at birth?

Lugosi was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in 1882 and took his stage name from his birthplace, Lugos; he emigrated in 1919 and reached the United States in 1920.

Bela Lugosi was buried wearing what?

Lugosi was buried in his Dracula cape and costume in 1956; contrary to legend he never asked for it, and his son Bela Jr. and widow Hope chose it for him.

Which notorious director gave Lugosi late low-budget roles, including a posthumous cameo in Plan 9 from Outer Space?

Ed Wood cast Lugosi in Glen or Glenda (1953) and Bride of the Monster (1955), then used silent test footage shot before his 1956 death in Plan 9 from Outer Space.

What was Hammer's 1958 Dracula, starring Christopher Lee, the earliest vampire movie to do?

It also introduced fangs, red contact lenses and ready-prepared wooden stakes, with Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.

In Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), how many lines of dialogue does Christopher Lee's Count speak?

Lee said he refused to speak the poor dialogue; screenwriter Jimmy Sangster insisted the script never had any lines for him. He hisses instead.

Christopher Lee was the step-cousin of which famous author, whose uncle married Lee's mother?

Ian Fleming's uncle, the banker Harcourt Rose, married Lee's mother after her divorce, making the two men step-cousins; Lee played the Bond villain Scaramanga in 1974.

Who played the Count in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula?

Hopkins was Van Helsing, Reeves was Harker and Winona Ryder was Mina; critics praised Oldman and savaged Reeves.

How many Academy Awards did Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula win?

It won three Academy Awards — Eiko Ishioka's costume design, sound effects editing and makeup — from four nominations, missing only art direction.

Sesame Street's Count von Count made his first appearance in which year?

The Count debuted in 1972, in the premiere of Sesame Street's fourth season, performed by Jerry Nelson; thunder and lightning follow whenever he finishes counting.

In the 2012 animated film Hotel Transylvania, who voices Dracula?

Adam Sandler voices Dracula, with Selena Gomez as his daughter Mavis, who is turning 118; Sandler also voiced the Count in the 2015 and 2018 sequels.

In Hotel Transylvania, why did Dracula build his monsters-only hotel in 1895?

In Hotel Transylvania his wife was killed by a human mob — Martha died when torch-bearing villagers burned their home — so Dracula built the hotel to raise Mavis in safety until the backpacker Johnny stumbles in.

Bram Stoker spent ten years in the civil service at which institution while moonlighting as a critic?

Stoker spent ten years as a clerk at Dublin Castle, following his father into the civil service, while reviewing theatre for the Dublin Evening Mail, a paper co-owned by Sheridan Le Fanu.

Which of these was another of Bram Stoker's horror novels, published in 1911?

The Lair of the White Worm (1911) was Stoker's last novel, published a year before his death; Ken Russell filmed it in 1988 with Amanda Donohoe and Hugh Grant.

In Stoker's early notes, the vampire's castle was set in which region rather than Transylvania?

Stoker's early notes placed the castle in Styria, in Austria, with the villain called 'Count Wampyr'; he moved the story to Transylvania after reading about the region.

Stoker is thought to have written most of Dracula on summer holidays in which Scottish village?

Stoker first visited Cruden Bay, on the Aberdeenshire coast, in 1893 and returned most summers, with nearby Slains Castle often cited as a model for Dracula's.

Contemporary reviewers most often compared Dracula to which Wilkie Collins novel?

Reviewers likened Dracula's multi-narrator documents to Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1859–60), the sensation novel also told through a chain of witnesses' testimony.

How much did the first edition of Dracula, bound in yellow cloth with red lettering, cost in 1897?

Constable sold the first edition for 6 shillings, and Stoker's contract paid no royalty on the first thousand copies, so the book earned him little in his lifetime.

The first film to feature Count Dracula, Drakula halála (c. 1921), was made in which country?

Drakula halála (The Death of Dracula) was made in Hungary by director Károly Lajthay and is now lost apart from stills; Nosferatu followed in 1922 as the second screen Dracula.