Dracula, first published in 1897, has undergone a dramatic re-evaluation in modern literary history. Long dismissed as mere pulp fiction, it is by now hailed as a highly significant work and a pioneering proto-modernist text. But how did its author, Bram Stoker, create this extraordinary tale? There were no vampires in British folklore—so where did he get his ideas? Out for the Count tracks the growth of the vampire trope from the early nineteenth century through a series of classic works by Byron, Polidori, le Fanu and others, during which we learn about the formation of the modern literary canon, the folklore of the undead, and the creation and subsequent growth of one of the most prolific popular culture genres–vampire fiction–which reached its first apotheosis in Stoker’s masterwork, Dracula.
