Bram Stoker · 1897 · First edition text, 1897
Dracula
Dracula (1897) is told entirely through journals, letters, and news clippings, starting with Jonathan Harker’s trip to a Transylvanian castle he can’t leave. The Historian reading companion in IO reader places Stoker’s vampire against real 1890s anxieties about foreign invasion, disease, and the New Woman as the documents pile up.
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PART I · PARAGRAPH
3 May. Bistritz.--Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.
3 May.
Dracula · Bram Stoker
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The facts
| Length | about 161,300 words · 7,840 sentences |
|---|---|
| In sentence cards | about 523 minutes |
| Difficulty | steady |
| First line | 3 May. Bistritz.--Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. |
| Themes | Jonathan Harker's Journal · Letters and Diaries · Dr. Seward's Diary · The Pursuit |
Is Dracula hard to read?
No — it's told in diary entries, letters, and telegrams, which makes it move quickly. In sentence cards it's about 523 minutes.
Which translation is this?
None needed — the 1897 first-edition English text, public domain.
How long is Dracula?
About 161,300 words, assembled from multiple narrators' documents; roughly 7,840 sentences.
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Colophon
Text: First edition text, 1897, from Project Gutenberg (pg:345). Cover: Standard Ebooks CC0 cover, bram-stoker/dracula. Reviewed 2026-09-04.