All of these publications contain the same story, a gothic horror romance that begins in the Carpathians, moves to England, and ends in the Carpathians. Jonathan Harker unwittingly aids and abets Count Dracula’s move to England much to the detriment of Jonathan’s friends and countrymen. The esteemed Dr. Van Helsing travels from Amsterdam to assist his former student, Dr. Seward, in destroying the vampire, Count Dracula. Bram Stoker uses the epistolary method for telling the story. That is, he narrates the story through letters and diary entries with very little use of dialogue.
The Barnes & Noble Classics version of Dracula, 2003, contains numerous supplemental materials such as introduction, endnotes, comments and questions. This version would be best for the student reading Dracula for a class assignment. This version is the least expensive print version I could find, but also had the smallest print, with the poorest quality of paper and ink.
Two editions worth noting because of their uniqueness are W.W. Norton & Company’s The New Annotated Dracula and Viking Studio’sIllustrated Dracula, 2006. Jae Lee did the illustrations for this version. She has also illustrated a number of the Stephen King, Dark Tower series. The New Annotated Dracula tells you everything you wanted to know about Count Dracula and then some. Neil Gaiman provides the introduction for this version.
Released in October 2009 Dutton Adult published yet another edition of Dracula. For this edition, they replicated theoriginal cover. This version coincided with the publication of the sequel, Dracula: the Un-Dead. Bram Stoker’s great grandnephew, Dacre Stoker wrote the sequel based on Bram’s notes.
No matter which publisher’s product you buy, enjoy the experience.
Bruce G. Smith 11/12/2009