Initial Reception of Dracula
English Lit: OCR A Level Dracula, topic 7.1.1
The Initial Reception of Dracula
AO5 requires students to explore literary texts informed by different interpretations. As such, integrating the ideas of literary critics alongside your own interpretations is important in an exam response.
The Manchester Gazette
- The Manchester Gazette suggested that Gothic literature had passed its peak in 1897, suggesting that “Man is no longer in dread of the monstrous and the unnatural, and although Mr Stoker has tackled his gruesome subject with enthusiasm, the effect is more often grotesque than terrible [...] it is, however, an artistic mistake to fill a whole volume with horrors. A touch of the mysterious, the terrible or the supernatural is infinitely more effective and credible."
Arthur Conan Doyle
- Stoker’s contemporary, Arthur Conan-Doyle, was more receptive to the depiction of the grotesque, writing to Stoker to inform him "how very much I have enjoyed reading Dracula. I think it is the very best story of diablerie (sorcery supposedly assisted by the devil) which I have read for many years."
Stoker's mother
- Stoker’s mother was very receptive to her son’s work: that "No book since Mrs Shelley's Frankenstein or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality or terror…"
Test yourself on Initial Reception of Dracula
Who told Stoker that Dracula was "the very best story of diablerie (they) had read in years"?
Which book did Stoker's mum flatteringly compare Dracula to?
Who said the following of Dracula?
"No book since Mrs Shelley's Frankenstein or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality or terror…"