To borrow a phrase used by one of the characters in the novel, Dracula is “nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance.” In her introduction to this edition Glennis Byron first discusses the famous novel as an expression not of universal fears and desires, but of specifically late nineteenth-century concerns. And she discusses too the ways in which to the modern reader it is not Transylvania but London that is the location of the monstrosity in
Dracula
. The many appendices include contemporary reviews; source materials drawn on by Stoker; documents expressing contemporary views on trances, sleepwalking and hypnotism; and other relevant writing by Stoker, including “the censorship of Fiction,” in which he expresses his belief in the need to defend the social and moral purity of the nation.