Journal · Dracula
Who's who in Dracula, without spoilers
Dracula is a file of papers: journals, letters, telegrams, newspaper cuttings, a ship's log and a diary spoken into a phonograph. Every few pages the writer changes, and with no one to introduce them, the names blur. Here are the people who matter, in the words of our edition's who's who, which tells you who they are and never what becomes of them.
The traveler and the Count
- Jonathan Harker
- A young Englishman from Exeter, just qualified as a solicitor, sent by his employer Mr. Hawkins to Transylvania to settle Count Dracula's purchase of a London estate. His journal, kept in shorthand, opens the book.
- Count Dracula
- A Transylvanian noble who has bought an old estate near London and is eager to learn English ways: a tall old man with a long white moustache, dressed all in black, courtly and learned, with an ice-cold hand and great strength. Harker never sees him eat or drink, and he keeps to the night.
- Mr. Peter Hawkins
- Harker's employer, a solicitor of Exeter who acts for the Count; kept at home by gout, he sends Harker in his place with a letter praising him as faithful and discreet.
On the road to the castle
- The landlady of the Golden Krone
- The cheerful elderly woman who welcomes Harker to the inn at Bistritz, then begs him not to travel on the eve of St. George's Day and presses her crucifix on him.
- The Count's coachman
- A tall man with a long brown beard and a great black hat who meets Harker at the Borgo Pass in a calèche; his grip is like steel and the wolves fall back at his command.
- The Slovaks
- Travelers Harker sees along the way, striking in their wide hats, baggy white trousers and broad studded belts; he is told they are harmless.
Mina, Lucy and the three suitors
- Mina Murray
- Jonathan Harker's fiancée, an assistant schoolmistress who practices shorthand and typewriting so that she can be useful to him. Her letters and journal carry much of the story.
- Lucy Westenra
- Mina's dearest friend since they were small, a lively young woman living in London with her mother. Her letters to Mina confide her love for Arthur Holmwood and the three proposals she receives in a single day.
- Dr. John Seward
- A clever, self-possessed doctor of twenty-nine who has a large lunatic asylum under his care; Lucy's first suitor and an old friend of Holmwood and Morris. He keeps his diary on a phonograph.
- The Hon. Arthur Holmwood
- The tall, curly-haired young man Lucy loves, a close friend of Morris and Seward, and the only son of Lord Godalming.
- Quincey P. Morris
- A young American from Texas, widely traveled and full of adventures, who amuses Lucy with American slang; her second suitor.
The doctor, the patient and the old man on the cliff
- Professor Abraham Van Helsing
- A Dutch doctor of Amsterdam, Seward's old teacher and friend, a scientist and philosopher who knows as much about obscure diseases as anyone alive. He writes a vivid English all his own.
- R. M. Renfield
- A patient in Dr. Seward's asylum, aged fifty-nine, physically strong and easily excited, whose strange fixed ideas Seward has resolved to understand.
- Mr. Swales
- A very old man of Whitby, nearly a hundred by his own account and once a sailor in the Greenland whaling fleet, who sits with his cronies on the churchyard cliff. He befriends Mina and talks to her in broad Yorkshire dialect, scoffing at legends and at the lies he says tombstones tell.
- The captain of the Demeter
- The master of the Russian schooner Demeter, bound from Varna to Whitby with silver sand and boxes of earth; his log-book tells the story of the voyage.
Where the name came from
Stoker found it on holiday. In the summer of 1890, in Whitby's subscription library, he read William Wilkinson's account of Wallachia and Moldavia, published in 1820, which mentioned a 15th-century ruler called Dracula and added that in the Wallachian language the word meant "devil". Stoker copied it into his notes. For most of the years he spent on the book, it was called The Un-Dead.
Keep the whole cast at your elbow
These are 15 of the 52 entries in our edition's who's who, printed before Chapter I. The note before each of the 27 chapters tells you whose papers you're reading, which dates, usually where, and what to watch for, and the glossary's over 400 terms cover everything from paprika hendl (chicken with paprika) to Mr. Swales's "belly-timber" (his supper).