How to Read Dracula for the First Time

The first pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula give you a recipe to remember and a train schedule to follow. Jonathan Harker is on a business trip, and he writes down the kinds of things he might want to tell Mina when he gets home. Before long, he’s using the same journal to work out what’s happening inside a castle he can’t leave. The journal hasn’t changed. What Jonathan needs it for has.

That’s the easiest way into Dracula. When the book switches from a journal to a letter, telegram, or newspaper report, look at the heading and ask what the writer was trying to do. A note to a friend and a doctor’s record of a patient will notice different things. Stoker lets you read both, which means you can sometimes see a connection neither writer has reason to make.

Start with what Jonathan can explain

In the opening chapters, Jonathan writes about his route through Transylvania, the food he eats, and the people he meets. Once he’s at Castle Dracula, he still looks for ordinary explanations. The Count says he keeps late hours, and there’s a certain logic to accepting that when you’ve only just met your host. Pay attention to how long Jonathan keeps trying to make the details fit the terms of an ordinary visit.

You may arrive at the book already knowing what Dracula is. Jonathan has to figure out what kind of trouble he’s in while also working out whom he can ask for help. That difference is where much of the suspense lives.

Give the letters from England a little time

The move from the castle to correspondence between Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra can feel abrupt. The letters make room for friendship, work, and marriage at precisely the moment you might want answers about the castle. Let them reset the pace. They show what Mina and Lucy expected their lives to look like before strange events began to interrupt them.

Dr. Seward’s phonograph diary introduces another rhythm. He records observations in a more clinical voice, and his early entries focus on a patient named Renfield. If you lose your place when the book switches back to him, check the heading and pick up the thread of his previous entry. You can keep the English storylines separate until the novel gives you a reason to connect them.

Notice when Mina makes the records shareable

Later in the novel, Mina types up Jonathan’s shorthand journal and transcribes Seward’s phonograph recordings. It’s easy to skim past the typing on the way to the next encounter with Dracula. But imagine trying to compare a shorthand notebook with a set of recorded cylinders. Once the accounts are on paper, the group can read across them and compare dates. What one person experienced in isolation can finally inform someone else’s decisions.

This is also a good point to look back at the document headings. Earlier, the names and dates mostly helped you find your bearings. Now they help the characters establish who knew what, and when.

If you take notes, start with one line

Write down a date, a name, and one detail that seems out of place. Try it when you catch yourself thinking, “Haven’t I seen something like this before?” If you’re rereading, add what the writer thinks happened. Comparing that guess with what you remember can make an unremarkable entry feel much more ominous.

And if the dates slip by, keep reading. Stoker gives the characters the same job he gives you. They have to go back through what’s already on the page and discover which details they can finally put together.

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Want a print copy you can flip back through as the entries start to overlap? Find Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the Penguin Classics paperback on Amazon. You can also read the full novel free at Project Gutenberg.

If you’re still deciding whether to start the novel, see our Dracula book review. Once you’ve finished, read why Dracula feels like reading a case file for a closer look at what the collected records can prove.

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