Bram Stoker drew inspiration for his 1897 gothic epistolary novel Dracula by poring over books at The London Library, a private institution in St. James’s Square, London. In 2018, the library pinpointed 26 volumes Stoker consulted during his writing process. Remarkably, many carry his handwritten notes, underlinings, and folded pages. Librarians everywhere might jokingly call these monstrous book defacing crimes worthy of a flogging. Among the most heavily marked were Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book of Were-Wolves, Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and Emily Gerard’s “Transylvanian Superstitions”—works blending eerie folklore with sharp critique that sparked Stoker’s imagination.
Published in 1865, Baring-Gould’s The Book of Were-Wolves explores werewolf legends and vampire lore through a scholarly lens. A clergyman and folklorist, he sifted through tales—like the grisly trials of accused werewolves such as Peter Stumpp or exhumations of unnaturally preserved bodies tied to Slavic upir and Romanian strigoi—with curiosity and skepticism, treating them as anthropological curiosities.
Across the centuries, Thomas Browne’s 1646 Pseudodoxia Epidemica tackled the “vulgar errors” of its day. A physician and polymath, Browne debunked oddities like the belief that chameleons live on air alone. His blend of scientific inquiry and dry wit unraveled superstition—a rational counterpoint Stoker likely found intriguing but likely unhelpful for horror novel.
Then there’s Emily Gerard’s “Transylvanian Superstitions,” published in The Nineteenth Century journal in 1885. This ethnographic study dives into Romanian folklore, spotlighting vampire beliefs. Gerard recounts tales of the strigoi—dead souls rising to torment the living—and practices like staking corpses to keep them down. Stoker’s notes mention “Nosferatu,” a term some tie to her work (though its origins are debated), showing her influence on Stoker’s undead vision.
Source: London Library and Stoker’s Study Books, Dracula. Graphic: Dracula, Grok 3.
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