Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula PDF Download

Author: David J. Skal
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1631490117
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1095

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Book Description
Shortlisted for the Edgar Award (Critical/Biographical) Finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (Nonfiction) Finalist for the Anthony Award (Critical Nonfiction) A revelatory biography exhumes the haunted origins of the man behind the immortal myth, bringing us "the closest we can get to understanding [Bram Stoker] and his iconic tale" (The New Yorker). In this groundbreaking portrait of the man who birthed an undying cultural icon, David J. Skal "pulls back the curtain to reveal the author who dreamed up this vampire" (TIME magazine). Examining the myriad anxieties plaguing the Victorian fin de siecle, Skal stages Bram Stoker’s infirm childhood against a grisly tableau of medical mysteries and horrors: cholera and famine fever, childhood opium abuse, frantic bloodletting, mesmeric quack cures, and the gnawing obsession with "bad blood" that pervades Dracula. In later years, Stoker’s ambiguous sexuality is explored through his passionate youthful correspondence with Walt Whitman, his adoration of the actor Sir Henry Irving, and his romantic rivalry with lifelong acquaintance Oscar Wilde—here portrayed as a stranger-than-fiction doppelgänger. Recalling the psychosexual contours of Stoker’s life and art in splendidly gothic detail, Something in the Blood is the definitive biography for years to come.

Author: Barbara Belford
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9780306810985
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
"What a splendid subject to sink one's teeth into," raved the Washington Post. Here was a six-foot-two Irishman with a red beard—a Victorian family man, a spirited debater, and the author of novels and short stories largely forgotten today. All, of course, except for Dracula, which has enjoyed countless stage and screen incarnations and haunted the dreams of many generations. Bram Stoker lived at the very center of late-Victorian social and artistic life and numbered among his friends Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Whistler, William Gladstone, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. But it was his relationship with the mesmerizing, domineering actor Henry Irving that may have played the most crucial role in Stoker's life—a real-life monster who ultimately led to Stoker's most famous creation. In this book that the Baltimore Sun called "superb," Barbara Belford draws on unpublished archival material to reveal the links between the reticent author's life, his vampire tale, and the political, occult, cultural, and sexual background of the 1890s.

Author: David J. Skal
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429998458
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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A fully updated edition of David J. Skal's Hollywood Gothic, "The ultimate book on Dracula" (Newsweek). The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. Most of us can recite without prompting the salient characteristics of the vampire: sleeping by day in its coffin, rising at dusk to feed on the blood of the living; the ability to shapeshift into a bat, wolf, or mist; a mortal vulnerability to a wooden stake through the heart or a shaft of sunlight. In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David J. Skal maps out the archetypal vampire's relentless trajectory from Victorian literary oddity to movie idol to cultural commodity, digging through the populist veneer to reveal what the prince of darkness says about us all. includes black-and-white Illustrations throughout, plus a new Introduction.

Author: Paul A. Murray
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781512150902
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
2016 edition of this acclaimed biography, updated with an additional chapter. REVIEWS of 2004 edition: 'Impressive' Lucasta Miller, Daily Telegraph 'From the Shadow of Dracula will be regarded as the definitive life of Stoker, a measured, well-written work.' Ian Thomson, Observer 'Paul Murray has served his subject well, drawing Abraham Stoker from the shadow of his best-known creation, and providing a rounded portrait of an intelligent and hard-working Irishman who has claimed a special place in our literary history. . .Bram Stoker may rest in peace.' Malcolm Barker, Yorkshire Post 'Excellent. . .No small part of the merits of Paul Murray's new biography is that its author is not an academic with a particular axe or theory to grind.' Dermot Bolger, Sunday Tribune 'A thorough appreciation of Stoker's life and literary work. . .a solemn and comprehensive appraisal of the man behind the world's most famous Vampire.' Chris Pillow, Sunday Business Post 'Murray has tracked down rst-hand reportage that brings the man glaringly to life.' Colin Donald, Scotsman 'An impressively detailed study of Stoker's life, as sturdy a work of historical excavation as any I've seen. . .Brilliant.' Hugh Tynan, Irish Examiner 'Paul Murray's extensive scrutiny of the influences on Dracula, makes capital reading.' Patricia Craig, Irish Times 'The Stoker story is a curious one, and even if it's been told before, Murray has a sure touch when it comes to handling facts and interpretations.' Humphrey Carpenter, Sunday Times"

Author: Bram Stoker
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0394848284
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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String garlic by the window and hang a cross around your neck! The most powerful vampire of all time returns in our Stepping Stone Classic adaption of the original tale by Bran Stoker. Follow Johnathan Harker, Mina Harker, and Dr. Abraham van Helsing as they discover the true nature of evil. Their battle to destroy Count Dracula takes them from the crags of his castle to the streets of London... and back again.

Author: Daniel Farson
Publisher: Michael Joseph
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Author: David J. Skal
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393045826
Category : Horror films
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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From the author of "Hollywood Gothic" and "The Monster Show" comes the definitive book on the men in white coats who haunt our technological dreams and nightmares: mad scientists. 100 photos. College lectures.

Author: Bram Stoker
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781542625173
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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HOME TITLES GENRES AUTHORS LANGUAGES NEW TITLES RECOMMENDED POPULAR Dracula Cover image for Download download author: Bram Stoker published: 1897 language: English wordcount: 160,098 / 423 pg flesch-kincaid reading ease: 73.3 loc category: PR series: World's Best Reading audiobook: librivox.org downloads: 117,966 mnybks.net#: 6694 origin: gutenberg.org more info: litsum.com genres: Horror, Gothic, Fiction and Literature, Audiobook Read Online in Browser Here The world's best-known vampire story begins by following a naive young Englishman as he visits Transylvania to meet a client, the mysterious Count Dracula. Upon revealing his true nature, Dracula boards a ship for England, where chilling and gruesome disasters begin to befall the people of London... Show Excerpt ll and opened up the lofty, snow-covered peak of a mountain, which seemed, as we wound on our serpentine way, to be right before us. "Look! Isten szek!"--"God's seat!"--and he crossed himself reverently. As we wound on our endless way, and the sun sank lower and lower behind us, the shadows of the evening began to creep round us. This was emphasized by the fact that the snowy mountain-top still held the sunset, and seemed to glow out with a delicate cool pink. Here and there we passed Cszeks and slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but I noticed that goitre was painfully prevalent. By the roadside were many crosses, and as we swept by, my companions all crossed themselves. Here and there was a peasant man or woman kneeling before a shrine, who did not even turn round as we approached, but seemed in the self-surrender of devotion to have neither eyes nor ears for the outer world. There were many things new to me. For instance, hay-ricks in the trees, and here and there very beautiful masses of wee

Author: Ross Raisin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0525508783
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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From dreams of soccer glory to the realities of the minor leagues, the high-stakes world of English football comes to life in this vivid coming-of-age novel for fans of Nick Hornby and The Art of Fielding. After his unceremonious release from a Premier League academy at nineteen, Tom feels his bright future slipping away. The only contract offer he receives is from a lower-level club. Away from home for the first time, Tom struggles on and off the field, anxious to avoid the cruel pranks and hazing rituals of his teammates. Then a taboo encounter upends what little stability he has, forcing Tom to reconcile his suppressed desires with his drive to succeed. Meanwhile, the team’s popular captain, Chris, is in denial about the state of his marriage. His wife, Leah, has almost forgotten the dreams she once held for her career. As her husband is transferred from club to club, and raising their first child practically on her own, she is lost, disillusioned with where life has taken her. A Natural delves into the heart of a professional soccer club: the pressure, the loneliness, the threat of scandal, the fragility of the body, and the struggle of conforming to the person everybody else expects you to be. Praise for A Natural “This is a bold novel. [Raisin has a] deep and unwavering empathy for others, and an ability to find flashes of beauty in life’s unforgiving ugliness. His language might be spare, but his turn of phrase is strikingly elegant. . . . The way is lit by his keen perceptions; the novel suggests the frustrations that arise when lived experience fails to align with what was imagined, and analyzes the gap between spectatorship and participation. . . . If Raisin has chosen to focus on that which stifles rather than frees us, he has done so to demonstrate precisely why we need all the things that society and circumstance suppress. . . . The confidence and skill with which he pursues his vision is not just persuasive, it’s powerful.”—The New York Times Book Review “Raisin’s transporting and acutely observed novel speaks to us all. First-rate.”—Booklist (starred review) “An intimate picture of life in the lower reaches of professional British football . . . a bold theme . . . is rendered with restraint and sympathy. . . . [A Natural] is a sensitive treatment of very different kinds of solitude and pain.”—Kirkus Reviews

Author: Tyler R. Tichelaar
Publisher: Modern History Press
ISBN: 1615991387
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
The Gothic Wanderer Rises Eternal in Popular Literature From the horrors of sixteenth century Italian castles to twenty-first century plagues, from the French Revolution to the liberation of Libya, Tyler R. Tichelaar takes readers on far more than a journey through literary history. The Gothic Wanderer is an exploration of man's deepest fears, his eff orts to rise above them for the last two centuries, and how he may be on the brink finally of succeeding. Tichelaar examines the figure of the Gothic wanderer in such well-known Gothic novels as "The Mysteries of Udolpho," "Frankenstein," and "Dracula," as well as lesser known works like Fanny Burney's "The Wanderer," Mary Shelley's "The Last Man," and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "Zanoni." He also finds surprising Gothic elements in classics like Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes." From Matthew Lewis' "The Monk" to Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight," Tichelaar explores a literary tradition whose characters refl ect our greatest fears and deepest hopes. Readers will find here the revelation that not only are we all Gothic wanderers--but we are so only by our own choosing. Acclaim for "The Gothic Wanderer" ""The Gothic Wanderer" shows us the importance of its title figure in helping us to see our own imperfections and our own sometimes contradictory yearnings to be both unique and yet a part of a society. The reader is in for an insightful treat." --Diana DeLuca, Ph.D. and author of Extraordinary Things "Make no mistake about it, The Gothic Wanderer is an important, well researched and comprehensive treatise on some of the world's finest literature." --Michael Willey, author of Ojisan Zanoni Foreword by Marie Mulvey-Roberts, Ph.D. Learn more at www.GothicWanderer.com From Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com Literary Criticism: Gothing & Romance Literary Criticism: European - General