#OTD in 1897. First publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Let's celebrate #DraculaDay!
The novel was mostly written in the 1890s, and Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes, drawing extensively from folklore and history. He probably found the name "Dracula" in Whitby's public library while on holiday, selecting it because he thought it meant 'devil' in Romanian.
Dracula at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345
@bodhipaksa @gutenberg_org He seems to have taken the word from Emily Gerard’s THE LAND BEYOND THE FOREST (1888):
“More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Roumanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell…”
She did do her research in the field, & hers is the first recorded use of the term, but its origins are obscure.
@gutenberg_org @scotlit @bodhipaksa TIL that there exists a prior source for "nosferatu" published in German by one Wilhelm Schmidt in 1865. (Not the Wilhelm Schmidt who theorized about "original monotheism", he wasn't born yet. This Wilhelm Schmidt was a schoolmaster in Transylvanian Hermannstadt, today's Sibiu.)
🧛 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu_(word)
🧛 https://doaav.blogspot.com/2011/02/unearthing-nosferatu.html
@noctuaminervae @gutenberg_org @scotlit Funnily enough I was reading the Wikipedia article on the etymology of "Nosferatu" on Sunday, after watching a gorgeous restored print of Tod Browning's 1931 "Dracula". Highly recommended, but watch out for the Transylvanian armadilloes!
Incidentally, this was not the first film with "Dracula" in the title, but the other, Drakula Halála (Austria, 1921) has been lost.
Dracula is a 1931 American pre-Code vampire film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort and starring Bela Lugosi...
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