#ThrowbackToday: Published over 124 years ago today, the novel Dracula continues to define goth horror

In a time much before Edward Cullen and his family, from the famous book and movie series Twilight, redefined what vampires actually meant, there was Count Dracula. This vampire was born as a figment of Irish author Bram Stoker's imagination (or was it?) that he poured into his magnum opus Dracula, the novel which went on to set the trend for gothic horror.

The story is of Count Dracula, the vampire who bites people to turn them into his kind, and how he is vanquished by a team of five who won't rest until they chase him and he meets his death.

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What's really eerie about the novel, written as diary entries by its many characters, is that in the original preface from the Icelandic version of the story, the Dublin-born author claimed that not only were the events of the novel real, the characters were real too. It started to seem like the novel drifted between fact and fiction, but the publishers in London would not have it. The city had recently seen a few gruesome murders and wasn't about to entertain another such story. The preface and the first 102 pages were chopped and on May 26, 1897, the novel was published. Here's another bit of trivia for you. The original typescript of Dracula, which begins from page 102, is now in the possession of Microsft's Co-founder and horror enthusiast Paul Allen. 

Dracula was a sleeper bestseller that continues to be in circulation till date.