BBC’s 2020 Dracula and its Others

Remakes of Victorian novels abound in the twenty-first century. While Dracula seems to be a particular favourite for re-writes, we seem consistently drawn back to the Victorian era for our gothic monsters: The Limehouse Golem, Penny Dreadful, Jekyll + Hyde, Sweeney Todd, and many more.[1] Beth Palmer describes these almost Freudian re-imaginings as ‘dramas which are often […] seeking to re-stage, in different ways, the neo-Victorian double-act of surprise and recognition: the Victorians were so strange; the Victorians were strange

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Lara Rutherford-Morrison, Dracula as Prince Consort? Lord Ruthven as PM? The Vampiric Alternate History of Kim Newman’s ‘Anno Dracula’

Lara Rutherford-Morrison has a PhD in Victorian literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is currently an Affiliated Scholar at Concordia University in Montreal and blogs daily for Bustle. Her research considers the ways that contemporary culture reimagines and plays with Victorian literature and history, in contexts ranging from adaptations of Victorian novels in film and fiction to heritage tourism in the U.K. She can be found at her website and on Twitter @LaraRMorrison. With Halloween just around

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Lara Rutherford-Morrison – A Book to Sink One’s Teeth Into: Part Two

Lara Rutherford-Morrison – University of California, Santa Barbara Part Two: Bringing the Body into the Digital Book. You can read part two here. When people talk about the downsides of e-books, they often complain that e-books lack a connection between reader and body—without the physical texture, weight, and smell of the book and its pages, the e-book can seem (forgive the pun) rather bloodless. Interactive e-book apps, like PadWorx’s Dracula: The Official Stoker Family Edition (2010), attempt to draw the body back into

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Lara Rutherford-Morrison – A Book to Sink One’s Teeth Into: Part One

Lara Rutherford-Morrison-University of California, Santa Barbara Part One: Re-Vamping Dracula as an Interactive E-Book Since the iPad first arrived on the scene in 2010, a variety of e-book apps have attempted to take advantage of the uniquely interactive possibilities of the tablet computer. Many of these apps are designed for educational purposes. For example, Cambridge’s Shakespeare apps and Touch Press’s edition of Eliot’s The Wasteland include supplementary materials like audio-recordings of the texts, critical commentary, performance videos, and images—all aimed at

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Dracula and Bram Stoker – a novelist’s review

by Ann Victoria Roberts Would Bram Stoker recognise the characters in Sky’s new TV series? I doubt it. But Dracula the TV series is just one more twist on a popular theme, one that has been endlessly re-interpreted since the unauthorised film, Nosferatu, first appeared in 1922. Stoker’s widow sued the German production company, and in doing so created the publicity which led to a fresh surge of interest in the novel. After good reviews at the time of its

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Review: Dracula (2013)

Richard Gough Thomas (Manchester Metropolitan University) Purists may be offended that NBC’s Dracula re-envisions the Count as a ruthless anti-hero who, disguised as an American industrialist, wages a covert war of vengeance against the ‘Order of the Dragon’ who centuries ago murdered his wife. The Order, we are told, represent the forces of reaction that hold back science and reason that they might better rule us. The complication in Dracula’s plans is Mina Murray, student of the distinguished Professor Van Helsing, and

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“Is there anybody there?” :Examining Victorian Responses to Spiritualism and the Occult

The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth Century Spiritualism and the Occult, by Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn (eds.), Surrey: Ashgate, 2012, v + 436 pages, illustrated, £85 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-7546-6912-8 The Theology of Dracula: Reading the Book of Stoker as a Sacred Text, by Noel Montague-Etienne Rarignac, London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012, v +234 pages, illustrated, $40 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-7864-6499-9 Reviewed by Dr Clare Horrocks (Liverpool John Moores University) C.L.Horrocks@ljmu.ac.uk As the dust jacket of the Ashgate Companion notes,

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