Horror Fiction – Page 2 – Interesting Literature

Five Fascinating Facts about Dracula

Fun facts about Count Dracula and Bram Stoker, the man who created him

1. In early drafts of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula was originally named ‘Count Wampyr’. Bram Stoker’s original title for his 1897 novel Dracula was ‘The Dead Un-Dead’. However, he came across the story of Vlad the Impaler and was inspired to invent the character Dracula, whose name literally means ‘son of the dragon’. And that is how one of the most famous literary creations of the entire nineteenth century came into being – if it hadn’t occurred in quite this way, we might now be talking about Francis Ford Coppola’s film of Bram Stoker’s Wampyr.

Five Fascinating Facts about Richard Matheson

Fun facts about the author of I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

1. He was a huge influence on Stephen King. The king (pun intended) of contemporary American horror fiction has called Matheson ‘the author who influenced me the most as a writer’; Matheson’s vampire novel I Am Legend was, King has said, ‘an inspiration to me’. (We compiled some fascinating facts about King here.) Ray Bradbury, too, paid homage to Matheson, calling him ‘one of the most important writers of the 20th century’.

Five Fascinating Facts about Stephen King

Five fun Stephen King facts – including phobias, pseudonyms, and mistaken identities

1. Stephen King threw away early drafts of the manuscript of his first novel, Carrie. His wife retrieved it, encouraged him, and it was later published. King’s fiction has repeatedly centred on the loner, the figure who is bullied at school, who fails to ‘fit in’. His first novel, Carrie (1974) – about a girl who has telekinetic powers which she uses to exact revenge on her school bullies – perfectly exemplifies this. But King had doubts about the first few pages of the novel’s draft, and abandoned it; it was only down to his wife’s faith in the idea that he persevered with it. Indeed, Tabitha, King’s wife and a novelist in her own right, has come to the rescue in King’s career a number of times. For instance,

Guest Blog: Voivode vs. Vampire – Dracula in Modern Literature

By Gemma Norman, University of Birmingham The name ‘Dracula’ is a name synonymous with vampires: the handsome, seductive aristocratic Count of Bram Stoker’s novel is the image that first comes to mind upon hearing the name. Most people have also heard the name Vlad the Impaler, but it’s rare to find someone who knows that … Read more