Just wondering: How many editions of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA do you already own? At least two or three, I’m betting … maybe even one you’ve completely forgotten about. Thanks to the story being in the public domain, publishers never stop slapping a new cover on the classic 1897 tale to wring a few more dollars out of it.
But Leslie S. Klinger’s THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA is something rather special: probably the Drac edition you’ll cherish most. What the editor has done here is no surprise to anyone who marveled over his recent ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES volumes, because he does the same thing: crafted a definitive work.
As both Neil Gaiman and Klinger himself note in their introductions, the editor is not the first to tackle a thorough annotation of Stoker’s groundbreaking novel; previous efforts are mentioned, and even referenced throughout. But I don’t think you’re going to find one as entertaining and plugged into pop culture as this mammoth undertaking. It’s at once serious, scholarly and so much fun.
In a single, heavy, 600-plus-page hardcover, you get Stoker’s full text, of course, and so much more — primarily in the form of Klinger’s exhaustive, 1,500-ish footnotes which cast new light on the meaning of the story, how it related to its times and even inconsistencies and occasional screw-ups on Stoker’s part. Sometimes the footnotes are so thorough, not a single word of the actual DRACULA appears on the page.
In that aspect, you’re going to be learning a lot about the novel that you never knew before. It’s an undertaking, sure, but a wholly rewarding one, like an in-depth college elective you can’t wait to get to every week, but here you don’t have to pay tuition or even haul your ass out of bed.
Making the proceedings even better is a litany of illustrations — nearly 450, including period playbills, covers of the book from various countries, movie stills and the occasional oddity, such as a depiction of a Victorian doctor “examining” a young woman under her dress, without even looking at her, driving home a point made in one offhanded reference from Stoker. Some pictures are decorative, some are supplementary, but all are appreciated, bringing visual richness to an already multilayered experience.
The so-called “lost chapter” of DRACULA, “Dracula’s Guest,” leads off the appendices, which also feature a chronology of the novel and a glossary of the antiquated slang used. A handful of additional essays explore Dracula on the screen, in print and as part of academia’s hallowed halls. These pieces are brief and by no means the final word on their respective subjects, yet their inclusion helps make the book as a whole authoritative.
Children of the night, hop to it! —Rod Lott
