#dracula

1369 Vampires Gather at Whitby AbbeyThe organization English Heritage is going all out to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. One of the events was a gathering of vampires at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire on May 26. The purpose was to break a Guinness World Record! They succeeded, with a total of 1369 people dressed as vampires all at once. To be considered "dressed," each participant had to wear black trousers with a waistcoat or shirt, or a black dress, plus a black cape or collared overcoat, and upper fangs. They had to stand together for five minutes to set the record. Oh, you can bet many pictures were taken, which you can see at BBC. Now, that's the kind of celebration you can sink your teeth into!English Heritage's year of Dracula centers around Whitby Abbey, which Bram Stoker visited in 1890 to drink in the Gothic setting for his vampire novel. Dracula fans visit the ruins at all times of the year, and some even ask where Dracula's grave is- forgetting for a moment that he is a fictional character. If you missed the record-breaking vampire gallery, you can still catch Dracula there. The story will be performed live every weekend from July 23rd to August 21st in front of the historic abbey.#Dracula #vampire #GuinnessWorldRecord #WhitbyAbbey    

Dracula Daily Unfolds the Novel in Real TimeHere's a fun way to digest an entire novel one bite at a time, and "bite" is the operative word when you are reading Bram Stoker's Dracula. The novel begins with Jonathon Harker's first diary entry on May 3, so that's the first bite, beginning today.Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel - it’s made up of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings - and every part of it has a date. The whole story happens between May 3 and November 10. So: Dracula Daily will post a newsletter each day that something happens to the characters, in the same timeline that it happens to them.You can read those entries online at Dracula Daily, in case you join in after May 3 and need to catch up. Just keep in mind that it's in blog order, meaning you'll have to scroll back to the May 3rd entry, and then read each post above it. Once you're caught up,you can subscribe to have each entry mailed to you daily, so you don't forget and miss an entry. Reading Dracula in this manner will keep you engaged through November, just the amount of time the original story took place! -via Metafilter #Dracula #BramStoker #readalong

The War Against the First Dracula FilmBram Stoker was not the first author to write about vampires, but his 1897 novel Dracula was the most widely-read up to that point, and established the concept of a vampire in the minds of his readers. It was the only novel Stoker wrote that was bringing in any money at the time of his death in 1912. Stoker's widow, Florence Balcombe Stoker, was not fond of Dracula, but she was fiercely protective of her husband's legacy, and the profit it produced. German expressionist filmmaker F.W. Murnau made a movie based on the novel, titled Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors, in 1922. The names of the characters were changed, but it was obviously the same story, which the producers admitted was "freely adapted" from the novel. But they did not ask the permission of Stoker's estate. When Florence Stoker heard of the movie, she went after the movie and its distributors with a vengeance, leading to a years-long court case. Thanks to a German version of "Hollywood accounting," there was no money to pay Stoker, so she set about destroying Nosferatu.As the greatest example of this phenomenon in film history, the copyright owner of what is essentially valuable intellectual property demanded every last print of an unauthorized adaptation be burned at the stake. Florence never saw Nosferatu; she had no interest in ever seeing Nosferatu. She only knew Nosferatu violated her rights and should be eradicated from the face of the Earth.This scheme not only destroyed Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors and came close to wiping it from history, but it also led to our popular image of Dracula that hardly resembled Stoker's character at all. Read what happened and the 100-year legacy of the cinematic Dracula at Den of Geek. -via Digg#vampire #Dracula #Nosferatu #BramStoker #FlorenceStoker #horror