I’ve made this graphic as a general guide for the first method. Some parts will be out of order for creative and story-building reasons, but you will still start in May and end November 1–10, no matter what choice you make. You can read each of the 27 chapters to its closest start date, or ignore the chapters entirely and just follow the dates. Stoker, in other words, uses the epistolary form to maximize Gothic terror and suspense.” How to read in theme “The result is not just polyvocal and multimedia but also effectively suspenseful, since the reader, being privy to all of the novel’s materials, frequently knows more than any single character and can see what is happening or is going to happen more clearly than they. He wasn’t the first to mix in many mediums, but the telegraph and (especially) phonograph were super new technologies at this time. At the time, doctors and some scientists began recording notes (dictations) using phonograph cylinders, so Stoker also included these. In addition to letters, Stoker includes fictitious diary entries, telegrams, newspaper accounts, and memos. Two centuries later, Bram Stoker would contribute to this tradition with Dracula. The style almost adds an implied neutral narrator handing you the sources. Loosely based on a real Lord and his sister-in-law in a scandal in 1962 London, the anonymous story being written as intimate letters made it seem more authentic (and, in this case, salacious) to readers. According to English Literature Professor Evan Gottlieb, the first epistolary novel in English was Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister in 1684. While we’ve learning about the past through correspondence (sometimes spicy, but often pretty boring) for centuries, if not longer, the novel part implies made-up elements. Other popular epistolary books (across genres and settings) include The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, The Martian by Andrew Weir, and Dear Haiti, Love Elaine by Maritza Moulite. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel in which readers are presented with different first- and second-person sources that, when read together, tell the story. Today is May 3, meaning that if you read the first chapter and read each proceeding chapter with the corresponding date, you can read the book in real-time.

If you’ve always wanted to read the story of Dracula but only really think about it around Halloween or in times of vampire fervor (like any season of What We Do In The Shadows), you’re in luck.

Bram stoker books