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

Authors

Dick Collins

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.
Available at: https://research.library.kutztown.edu/dracula-studies/vol8/iss1/1

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