The Children of the Night: Stoker's Dreadful Reading and the Plot of Dracula

Authors

Dick Collins

DOI

10.70013/66h1i2j3

Abstract

My intention is to suggest that the plot of Dracula was modeled on the plot of The String of Pearls, the Penny Dreadful serial that created Sweeney Todd. I am not suggesting that Stoker deliberately or consciously “stole” the plot and “rewrote it” with “differences”; nor can I prove he had read it, let alone that he had it on the desk as he wrote. Instead I am making the altogether more ordinary claim that Stoker was familiar with the earlier book, and others like it; that the memory of it provided him with a basic framework of plot; and that, since a plot can only be acted out by characters, the framework he took from Pearls provided him with certain basic protagonists

Recommended Citation

Collins, Dick (2006) "The Children of the Night: Stoker's Dreadful Reading and the Plot of Dracula," Journal of Dracula Studies: Vol. 8: No. 1, Article 1.
DOI: 10.70013/66h1i2j3
Available at: https://research.library.kutztown.edu/dracula-studies/vol8/iss1/1

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