A Dream of Dracula: In Search of the Living Dead

by Leonard Wolf

Vintage paperback

Genres: Vampires, Nonfiction, Horror, History, Folklore, Mythology

Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[Tracy Angelina Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite possibly the most comprehensible meditation on Vampires and Vampire lore as perceived in various cultures. Leonard Wolf accounts his encounters with real Vampires and offers up his vast knowledge on the Romanians and Vlad Tepes in particular. Excellent book, but hard to find these days. Worth the effort to find, though, especially if you're researching Vampires for whatever reason.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a fascinating mediation of the vampire mythos with the only thing holding it back a BIT is some dated information (Gilles de Rais for example is now believed to be a patsy). Wolf's writing while oftentimes feeling VERY academic, was still incredibly compelling. I was drawn into his writing style and would recommend this book to any other fellow Drac-Heads out there.

[Jason Fetters · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited to see this at a used bookstore and it has been on my radar for years. Growing up, I was given several horror books and one was The Annotated Dracula with annotations by Leonard Wolf. I knew he was a professor of English Lit so I thought this would be a great read.
The best chapter is chapter 6 were the focus is on the novel Dracula. This is the chapter where Wolf gives solid critical analysis of Bram Stoker and Dracula.
The last chapter is Wolf writing about Dracula in the movies with the good, Nosferatu, Universal's Dracula, Hammer's Horror of Dracula and the bad John Carradine in House of Frankenstein and the worst, Billy the Kidd vs Dracula. Wolf patiently watches the good and bad in a darken theater with the outside sunshine, Pacific Ocean, and families enjoying picnics while he watches triple features alone in the dark. He probably should have went outside but he has been so captured by the Count on the sliver screen that he consumes it all.
The chapters on Dracula and vampires in books and movies is what makes this worth reading. The rest is about Wolf's reality as a middle aged academic who is afraid of his own death. His psychiatrist tells him that his fear of death is what compels him to watch bad movies on Saturday afternoons. I think movie fans, particularly genre fans are simply willing to watch whatever in the hopes of finding a diamond in the rough, hidden gold among the junk.
The worst part of the book is Wolf writing about the hippies and counter-culture movement in early seventies San Francisco. That was just so boring to me. However, as the movie fan who is willing to watch crap, you just have to jug along to get to the better subjects and chapters.

[Bobby Frontispiece · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leonard Wolf is a skilled writer with a lot of great information on the vampire genre but is also a bit too confessional and tawdry in his asides. The parts about Dracula and the vampire in literature and cinema are top notch. It's when he starts to wander into his dream work on the subject of BLOOD and real life vampires that it becomes a book of its age (1972) and starts sounding like counterculture post-hippy era prose.

While I'm glad that he spent quite a bit of time discussing other books on vampires, which I'd never heard of previously, there seemed to be an element of holding back on presenting the actual Dracula aspect of the book. So in that regards it is a tad unfocused and meandering with a few unnecessary jaunts into almost purposefully pornographic anecdotes but overall a good read.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was very curious about this one but its content didn't fully convince me. High brow headers like "energy without grace, the atavistic revolution" refer to Mick Jagger as kind of vampire, in Dracula's symbols we read about She (by Rider Haggard), the chase of blood and the sleep of reason quote many kind of vampires in other literary works. Of course we hear about Dracula as King of vampires, Stoker's role, actors like Lugosi, Lee or John Carradine who are forever linked to Dracula. But everything was a bit confusing und unstructured. This might be the dream quoted in the title of the book. You'll find some interesting illustrations and good black an white photos inside. Overall definitely not the best book on Dracula but it will keep you busy some time and give you some inspiration.

[Melissa S · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been sitting on my TBR pile for... at least two decades, and given the tiny, tiny font sizes, I figured I should read it while I still can! This is a dizzyingly varied romp through all things vampire, with topics veering from academic study to personal musings to weirdly voyeuristic activities (that usually involve women undressing) as the mood strikes. Wolf's literary analyses of early gothic fiction, Bram Stoker's "Dracula," and other, later vampire novels are informative and compelling, and his observations of modern vampire films (well, those up to 1972, when the book was published) are fun. I loved his interview with Christopher Lee. In spite of its organizational challenges, it was quite enjoyable.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Around about the time Marvel Comics and their Black & White magazine series focused on Dracula and vampires, I discovered this book, and Stoker's novel. Here were litereary and historical contexts and antecedents to Dracula, including Vlad Tepes, Elizabeth Bathory, Varney the Vampyre (!), and ye olde Nosferatu. I enjoyed this as a kid, and recommend it, on that basis.

[Joe Noir · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good non-fiction Dracula book, but not as good as McNally and Florescu. Try their In Search Of Dracula instead.

[Elizabeth Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leonard Wolf hits it right on the head. A necessity for anyone into vampire books.

[Aric Cushing]

A personal journey through a landscape of childhood dreams, melancholy, and vampire sentiment.