Summary

Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor’s clerk, travels by train across Europe on his way to Transylvania, where he has business with a man named Count Dracula. Dracula has recently purchased property in London with the help of Jonathan’s firm. Jonathan is simultaneously charmed by the simple peasant lifestyle he sees as he crosses Eastern Europe, and irritated by their lackadaisical train schedules. He has heard the peasants are superstitious, which he sees firsthand while spending a night in Bistritz, a town in the Carpathian Mountains.

Jonathan questions the staff at the Golden Krone Hotel about Count Dracula, but the old couple in charge refuse to speak about him. They beg Jonathan not to continue his trip that day, which is the eve of St. George’s Day, when “all the evil things in the world will have full sway” (Page...