By: Amy Jelf,
on 6/12/2015
Now that the second season of the Oxford World's Classics Reading Group is drawing to a close, let's see how much you've learnt from reading Bram Stoker's Dracula. Test your knowledge of all things Vampire with our quiz.
The post How much do you know about Dracula?[quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 4/22/2015
The date-line is 2014. An outbreak of a deadly disease in a remote region, beyond the borders of a complacent Europe. Local deaths multiply. The risk does not end with death, either, because corpses hold the highest risk of contamination and you must work to contain their threat. All this is barely even reported at first, until the health of a Western visitor, a professional man, breaks down.
The post Why bother reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 4/15/2015
There were many books on vampires before Bram Stoker's Dracula. Early anthropologists wrote accounts of the folkloric vampire -- a stumbling, bloated peasant, never venturing far from home, and easily neutralized with a sexton’s spade and a box of matches. The literary vampire became a highly mobile, svelte aristocratic rake with the appearance of the short tale The Vampyre in 1819.
The post Before Bram: a timeline of vampire literature appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 4/8/2015
Although occultists like the antiquarian Montague Summers would like to claim that the belief in vampires is global and transhistorical (and therefore probably true), the vampire is a thoroughly modern being. Like the Gothic genre itself, stories of vampires emerge in the Age of Enlightenment, as instances of primitive superstition that help define the rational scepticism of northern, Protestant Europe.
The post The birth of the vampyre: Dracula and mythology in Early Modern Europe appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Anna Lyndsey,
on 3/2/2015
I have always been a reader, but eight years ago, strange circumstances conspired to make me totally book-dependent. I was stuck within four walls, desperate for distraction and a conduit to the world; but I had to live in total darkness, unable to see words on a page. So, from the small player in the [...]
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 10/23/2014
By: Maryann Yin,
on 10/20/2014
The British Library is hosting a display focused on gothic storytelling called “Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination.” It will run until January 20, 2015.
The United Kingdom’s “biggest ever Gothic exhibition” features 200 rare objects; some of these pieces shine the spotlight on works by writers Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Clive Barker. Visitors will see ”posters, books, film and even a vampire-slaying kit.”
We’ve embedded a video about this exhibit—what do you think? Click here to learn more about it. Follow this link to read an essay by Neil Gaiman entitled “My hero: Mary Shelley.”
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By: Lauren Owen,
on 6/20/2014
It's a wild and thundery night. Inside a ramshackle old manor house, a beautiful young girl lies asleep in bed. At the window, a figure watches — a hideous creature with long fingernails and eyes that shine like polished tin. The girl wakes up, but is too terrified to flee as the vampire breaks the [...]
By: Kirsty,
on 3/17/2014
With today being St Patrick’s Day, we’ve taken the opportunity to recommend a few classic works of Irish literature to dip into while you’re enjoying a pint (or two) of Guinness.
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Joyce is one of the most famous figures in Irish literature, and Finnegans Wake is infamous for being one of the most formidable books in existence. It plays fantastic games with language and reinvents the very idea of the novel in the process of telling the story of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and his wife Anna Livia, in whom the character of Ireland itself takes form. Around them and their dreams there swirls a vortex of world history, of ambition and failure, pride and shame, rivalry and conflict, gossip and mystery.
A Tale of a Tub and Other Works by Jonathan Swift
This was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift. The author explains in a preface that it is the practice of seamen when they meet a whale to throw out an empty tub to divert it from attacking the ship. Hence the title of the satire, which is intended to divert Hobbes’s Leviathan and the wits of the age from picking holes in the weak sides of religion and government. The author proceeds to tell the story of a father who leaves as a legacy to his three sons Peter, Martin, and Jack a coat apiece, with directions that on no account are the coats to be altered. Peter symbolizes the Roman Church, Martin (from Martin Luther) the Anglican, Jack (from John Calvin) the Dissenters. The sons gradually disobey the injunction. Finally Martin and Jack quarrel with the arrogant Peter, then with each other, and separate.
The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays by J. M. Synge
In The Playboy of the Western World, the action takes place in a public house, when a stranger enters and is persuaded to tell his story. Impressed, the admiring audience thinks he must be very brave indeed to have killed his father, and in turn the young tramp blossoms into the daring rollicking hero they believe him to be. But then his father, with a bandaged head, turns up seeking his worthless son. Disillusioned and angry at the loss of their hero, the crowd turns the stranger, who tries to prove that he is indeed capable of savage deeds, even attempting unsuccessfully to kill his father again. The play ends with father and son leaving together with the words “Shut yer yelling for if you’re after making a mighty man of me this day by the power of a lie, you’re setting me now to think if it’s a poor thing to be lonesome, it’s worse maybe to go mixing with the fools of earth.”
Dracula by Bram Stoker
One of the greatest horror stories ever written. This is the novel that introduced the character of Count Dracula to the world, spawning a whole host of vampire fictions in its wake. As well as being a pioneering text in horror fiction, it also has much to say about the nature of empire, with Dracula hell-bent on spreading his contagion into the very heart of the British empire. Fun fact: Bram Stoker’s wife, Florence Balcombe, had previously been courted by Oscar Wilde.
The Major Works by W. B. Yeats
W. B. Yeats was born in 1865 and died in 1939. His career crossed the 19th and 20th centuries, from the Romantic early poems of Crossways and the symbolist masterpiece The Wind Among the Reeds to his last poems. Myth and folk-tale influence all of his work, most notably in Cathleen ni Houlihan among others. The importance of the spirit world to his life and work is evident in his critical essays and occult writings, and he also wrote a whole host of political speeches, autobiographical writings, and letters.
The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan)
This is the story of the son of an English lord, Horation, who is banished to his father’s Irish estate as punishment for gambling debts, he adopts the persona of knight errant and goes off in search of adventure. On the wild west coast of Connaught he finds remnants of a romantic Gaelic past a dilapidated castle, a Catholic priest, a deposed king and the king’s lovely and learned daughter, Glorvina. In the process he rediscovered a love for the life and culture of his country. Written after the Act of Union, The Wild Irish Girl (1806) is a passionately nationalistic novel and an essential novel in the discourse of Irish nationalism. The novel was so controversial in Ireland that the author, Lady Morgan, was put under surveillance by Dublin Castle. There is a bust of Lady Morgan in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the plaque mentions that Lady Morgan was “less than four feet tall.”
In a Glass Darkly by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
This dark collection of five stories was said by none other than Henry James to be “the ideal reading… for the hours after midnight”. Indeed, J. Sheridan Le Fanu himself had a reputation for being both reclusive and rarely seen in the daytime. His fascination with the occult led to his stories being truly spine-chilling, drawing on the Gothic tradition and elements of Irish folklore, as well as on the social and political anxieties of his Anglo-Irish contemporaries.
Kirsty Doole is Publicity Manager for Oxford World’s Classics.
For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the OUPblog. Subscribe to only Oxford World’s Classics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
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Image credit: James Joyce. By Djuna Barnes. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The post An Irish literature reading list from Oxford World’s Classics appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Jason Boog,
on 11/8/2012
Google has created a Google Doodle (embedded above) in honor of the 165th birthday of the great horror novelist Bram Stoker.
To celebrate the milestone, we’ve rounded up free eBooks you can download download right now for your eReader, smartphone or tablet. Follow the links below to read.
Follow these links to explore more free eBooks at Project Gutenberg: our massive Free eBook Flowchart, our Free Books for Halloween collection, our Free Herman Melville books list, our Free Edgar Allan Poe books collection, our Downton Abbey poetry reading list and our Free Books That Inspired David Foster Wallace list and Free Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read.
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By: Jason Boog,
on 10/31/2012
To celebrate Halloween and All Hallow’s Read, we’ve rounded up 25 free horror books that you can download right now for your eReader, smartphone or tablet. Follow the links below to read…
In 2010, novelist Neil Gaiman created the “All Hallow’s Read,” literary holiday, a night to give someone you love a scary book. The writer explained the new tradition in the video embedded above–here’s more from the official site:
Obviously, we support bookshops and authors, but more than that, this is about making a holiday tradition of book-giving. So feel free to give second-hand books or books from your own shelves. And feel just as free to buy a beautiful new book from a small independent bookseller, or from online or… look, there’s no wrong way to buy a book. You can even gift it to their Kindle … If you do not know what scary book to give someone, talk to a bookseller or a librarian. They like to help. Librarians will not mind even if you admit that you are not planning to take out a book, but instead you are going to buy one and give it to someone.
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By: Jason Boog,
on 8/14/2012
What’s your favorite kind of book? We’ve created a giant flowchart to help you browse the top 50 free eBooks at Project Gutenberg.
Click the image above to see a larger version of the book map. Your choices range from Charles Dickens to Jane Austen, from Sherlock Holmes to needlework. Below, we’ve linked to all 50 free eBooks so you can start downloading right now. The books are available in all major eBook formats.
Follow this link to see an online version of the flowchart, complete with links to the the individual books.
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| 50 Book Pledge | Book #15: Dracula by Bram Stoker |
I present a passage from House of Anansi‘s Winter by Adam Gopnik.
Winter is, once again, the white page on which we write our hearts. They would look different on a greener page.
The History Press is to publish a title which claims to offer new insights into the historical phenomenon of Jack the Ripper and the creation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The Dracula Secrets: Jack the Ripper and the Darkest Sources of Bram Stoker by historian Neil Storey has been acquired by commissioning editor Jay Slater and will be published in May, on the 125th anniversary of the original Dracula publication.
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Jeremy Robson has secured world rights to a book that features the previously unpublished notebooks of Bram Stoker as one of Robson's launch titles for his new imprint at Biteback.
Robson bought the rights directly from Stoker's great-grandnephew, Dacre Stoker, and Dracula scholar Dr Elizabeth Miller. The Lost Journals of Bram Stoker is provisionally scheduled for publication by the Robson Press next spring.
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By: Stroppy Author,
on 9/14/2011
Writers' notebooks are personal, valuable, essential. Somewhere to jot down thoughts as they occur before they disappear back into the ether. They contain the germs of ideas, solutions to problems, plots and titles that never went anywhere - a nostalgia-fest for the writer and a boon for literary biographers and critics in the case of the famous. Reading them is like looking into lit, uncurtained windows on a winter night, especially those in the backs of houses passed on the train. They give a privileged insight into the interior life - the writer in the wild, roaming his or her territory unaware of observers.
I've been using a facsimile of Bram Stoker's notebooks for Dracula while researching my own vampire series, Vampire Dawn (Ransom, March 2012). They look familiar. Spattered with odd jottings that are hard to interpret later, but also with longer pieces meticulously copied or summarised from books and conversations. There are typewritten notes and annotated bits of typescript as well as pages of handwriting (thankfully neat in his case). They offer a fascinating glimpse into the process of composing Dracula. The bits he didn't use are just as interesting as those he did.
He was very thorough. He went to Romania and interviewed local people. He wrote long lists of Romanian words he might use. He researched boats that had sunk off the coast of Whitby and boats that carried their cargo to shore. He recorded any odd episode or story he could use. Just as we all do.
I have two types of notebook. There's always a general notebook that is carried almost everywhere, and filled with odd ideas, observations, scribblings of any kind. Those are a chaotic jumble that probably make little sense to anyone else. Then there are specific notebooks for each project. These show the genesis and evolution of a book. It's interesting later to see the bits that never made it, the ideas that look really stupid later, and how far the final book has wandered from the original idea or plan.
My notebooks will never be of real interest, like Stoker's, but I can't show his as the facsimile is copyright, so here's a peek inside mine as a poor substitute for the curious.
This is a Moleskin softcover brown notebook. On the cover is a printout of an early version of one of the covers of the series (the first cover we fixed on).
I always stick a picture on a notebook or folder as it's the quickest way to see which is which.
Inside... these are bits printed from the web. I needed to know exactly how a guillotine works and the position of the body of the victim just before execution. This continues on further pages. In case you ever need to know, there is a tilted bench that the beheadee lies on.
By: Stacy A. Nyikos,
on 9/7/2011
Posted on 7/7/2010
Meg Cabot (of Princess Diaries fame) is the author of over twenty-five series and books for both adults and teens. Her most recent book is the paranormal romance Insatiable, a modern sequel to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Armed with the Oxford World Classics edition, she launched a Dracula reading group earlier this summer, and now–in an exclusive Q&A–shares her thoughts on all things vampire. Read on for the chance to test your Dracula knowledge and win prizes!
If you were bitten tomorrow, and had to choose a vampire name, what would it be?
Well, obviously, Meg Cadaver.
If someone attacked “Meg Cadaver” with a stake, and you only had Dracula to block the blow, would it work?
Absolutely. My super vampire strength, combined with the amazing power of Bram Stoker’s prose, would easily defeat their piddling human arm and wooden stake that was probably made by Ikea.
If Dracula had a Twitter handle, what would it be?
The possibilities are so endless . . .
Longinthetooth
Vampyvlad
Undeaddandy
CoffinCasanova
Although personally, I’d probably go with a simple 8U.
What is the most fascinating thing about vampires?
They never seem to die.
What is the most boring thing about vampires?
They never seem to die.
Who is the most ultimate, hard-core, awesome vampire of all time?
I feel compelled, because of the forum, to answer Dracula. But if you weren’t here I would answer Blade. I realize he’s a Daywalker, of course, but he has that awesome haircut.
Who is the sexiest vampire of all time?
Sadly for me it’s Michael Nourri circa 1979 as Dracula in “The Curse of Dracula” on the TV show “Cliffhangers,” which I wasn’t ever actually allowed to stay up to watch. Which is probably why, in my feverish imagination, it’s still the best. And now I never want to see it, as it could never live up to what I remember thinking, from the commercials: that it had to be the most fantastic show of all time. Considering it was canceled after only one season, I think this must be untrue. But you never know.
I’m upset that most modern vampires don’t wear cloaks. How do you feel about this?
I agree. In Insatiable, I gave my vampire a black Burberry trench coat, the tail of which flapped around a lot in the wind during moments of high tension, to give the impression of a cloak. But it’s definitely not the same thing. In my defense, the only way to give a vampire a cloak in a book set in modern times and not have him stand out like a big freak is to either make him be an eccentric bestselling author, have live him in the subway tunnels of NYC with the mole people, or have him work at a Medieval Times restaurant. None of these are particularly appealing options, especially the first.
By: Michelle,
on 4/24/2009
Below is another reflection on the life of a publicist from Michelle Rafferty. Rafferty has been a Publicity Assistant at Oxford University Press since September 2008. Prior to Oxford she interned at Norton Publishing and taught 9th & 10th grade Literature. Every Friday she is chronicling her adventures in publishing and New York City, so be sure to visit again next week. Follow Michelle on twitter here. Follow the OUPblog here.
This week the founders of Twitter defended the decreed “viral craze du jour” with responses ranging from tweeting yourself out of natural disasters (see Maureen Dowd’s grilling session) to mending relations between the United States and Iraq (see Jack Dorsey on CNN). It’s a good thing I finally decided to take this social networking craze seriously. I signed up for Twitter about two months ago, but I could never really make myself commit. I came up with a few forced posts, but the whole time I was thinking “I really don’t have the time for this” and “there isn’t enough room” and “what the heck is RT?” I had trouble making myself stay on the thing for more than five minutes. Then I found Perez Hilton.
It began Tuesday morning. I was haphazardly scrolling through my tweets when I noticed that The Today Show tweeted Matt Lauer’s interview with Miss California Carrie Prejean and Perez Hilton. I wanted to know what Hilton thought of all of this, so I went to his Twitter profile and began scrolling through his posts, which essentially gave me a play-by play of his reactions as the Miss America debate swept America. Throughout the day I continued to return to his profile while I pestered Oxford’s fearless blog leader Becca for tweeting tips (how do you retweet? How do you cram a URL into 140 characters? And what does the “@” mean?) By the end of the day I was reading Heidi Montag and Miley Cyrus’s opinions on Perez and Jesus (in case you are wondering, they support both).
After work I came down from my Twitter high and had the same sense of regret I felt in college after spending two hours on Facebook instead of working on a paper that was due the next day. Shel Silverstein’s poem “Jimmy Jet and His TV Set” came to mind: He watched till is eyes were frozen wide,/And his bottom grew into his chair./And his chin turned into a tuning dial,/And antennae grew out of his hair. Silverstein is no doubt rolling in his grave.
I also had a strong sense of déjà vu—hadn’t I seen this on the cover of US Weekly before? I realized that Twitter was doing what blogs had started years before: transform the static, speculative, and photo shopped tabloid duals into real time virtual wars. Although I would argue that this event is a whole lot more complex and substantive than the never ending Jen and Angelina showdown, it is similarly PR driven: in her Today Show interview Prejean admits she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to sit next to Lauer if this all hadn’t happened; Perez comments on how good he looks on Larry King; and is it really a coincidence that notorious celebrity feuder Donald Trump is involved? There are serious issues at hand, but all of these players also have images to uphold, promote, and protect.
I know I shouldn’t be admitting that the Miss USA pageant debate is what finally got me into Twitter, but when I analogize it to the Young Adult novel argument, it don’t think it seems so bad: people who support YA Literature think of it as a stepping stone, a hook for young leaders, Stephanie Meyer will lead them Bram Stoker. In the same way I have moved from “Celebrity Twitter” to “Muck Rack”—an amalgamation of tweets from the most influential members of the news media. This week I’ve learned that I can use Twitter to find out what editors, journalists and bloggers are writing and thinking about (the aforementioned “Muck Rack” makes this especially easy). And while Twitter seems to be the latest and greatest way to get the news, it also shows promise for being the book publicist’s best new tool. I can use tweets to figure out who might want to cover a particular book or interview a certain author. This type of information is especially useful for newbies like myself who are still trying to learn names and personalities in the media industry. Twitter can also be another element of the publicity campaign—I can tweet our Oxford author reviews, interviews, and events—and in a best case scenario get some retweets (that is, after I get some followers). If I make an effort to limit my time on Twitter (no “Twitter head”!), I think it could be something that actually makes me more productive at work.
There does seem to be some cognitive dissonance going on among Twitter users. We laugh at the satirical YouTube shorts and the absurdity of the word “Twitter” and all its variations; I had to mock shame when passing up on a lunch with co-workers after my Twitter rampage ate up all of my morning work time. So, until Twitter starts getting us out of earthquake rubble and initiating world peace, it looks I will need some sort of justification for my tweeting. Luckily it has become my newest job requirement.
And thank goodness we do all mostly still do this. Otherwise there would be nothing but computer drafts, probably with earlier ones deleted.
And what rich American university will want to buy our memory sticks?
I loved this post! Wouldn't it be great to see inside the notebooks of other sas bloggers too to give us struggling wannabes lots of the inspiration & motivation i got from this?
Thanks so much for sharing!
Really miracles! Thanks for the posting, after a long time i saw a beautiful article.. i am feeling well to visit your blog.
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Thanks for giving us a peek through your uncurtained window, Anne. It makes me want to go on more train journeys to peek some more!
I used to be more organised, but my notebooks are much more haphazard these days, which means I forget to stick in those important bits of paper, and sadly they end up lost. I will now endeavour to remedy that!
This is really fascinating Anne. I'm always interested in process. My notebooks are a bit like yours - general one to carry around full of shopping lists and telephone numbers and scraps of conversation, and different notebooks for each project I'm working on. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much for this post - I like the idea of sticking in research as well. I have just come to the computer to transfer notes scrawled on the back of a receipt when I forgot my own Moleskin notebook! Why do so many shops print on the back of receipts these days as well as the front? What is a forgetful writer to do?
This is lovely, Anne! I love having a good snoop in other people's notebooks. I slid over the guillotine stuff, though. Far too much info there for me!
Fascinating - and far more lovely than the stuffed file folders I use! Thanks for sharing!
So organised. I have loads of notebooks but never actually write in any of them. Now I know how it should be done!
Curious cat that I am, I enjoyed that peek into your notebook, :)
Thanks for sharing your writing process.
Thank you all for your kind comments. Nicky, I've never been called organised before - *undeserved warm glow*. Inkpen, you are so right about shops printing on both sides of the receipt; it's so inconsiderate!
'Uncurtained windows' captured my attention. I've just ripped down my curtain, and with the rush of light came a rush of ideas. Long Live Sunlight!!!
Loved this. I love notebooks and the delighted of starting a new one for a new book. But I am not as organised as you, Anne, and mine are normally just my own scribbles and not pasted in bits - which make it so much more interesting. Such a good idea.