Chapter 6 ‘I spent all yesterday trying to read’: reading in the face of existential threat in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

The characters as readers

The first reader we meet in Dracula is Jonathan Harker, a solicitor from London on a visit to the mysterious Count Dracula at his castle in Transylvania, whom he is to assist with the purchase of a London property. The Count has been meticulously planning his move to London – a more bountiful locale for preying on humans – while Harker, our somewhat naive hero of the first few chapters, is characterised nevertheless as a dutiful researcher from the beginning. In his very first journal entry of the epistolary novel, Harker writes that in preparation for his trip he ‘visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania’, thinking that it would benefit his meeting with the Count.⁶ Throughout the novel, Harker reads not only in order to find new information, but also to review what he has already learned, and sometimes as a distraction. As Harker begins to feel distressed about the behaviour of his host, he writes: ‘I had spent the day wearily over books, and, simply to keep my mind occupied, went over some of the matters I had been examined in at Lincoln’s Inn’ (ch. 3, p. 35). Later, feeling trapped, afraid and restless, Harker writes that he ‘came back to the library, and read there till I fell asleep’ (ch. 4, p. 55). In his growing discomfort with his situation, he turns to books, and seeks solace by reviewing texts he has studied before, perhaps in search of new insights.

Ultimately, Harker expresses a core belief about books, a conviction that each reading protagonist in the novel expresses at some point, often more than once: that information can (and should) be ‘verified by books and figures’, so that ‘there can be no doubt’ (ch. 3, p. 35). Moments later, in response to Dracula’s inquiries, Harker says: ‘I had verified all as well as I could by the books available’ (ch. 3, p. 37). These and other examples throughout the text indicate Harker’s reverence to the authority of books and written records as sources of ultimate veracity. This is both an inspiring and yet troublesome point of view towards the inherent authority of texts, to which we will return later, as one of our protagonists demonstrates the value of reading with scepticism.

As the novel is composed almost entirely of journal entries and letters by the principal characters, all of the readers are also writers, and all are keenly aware of their writing as contributions to a textual record. In keeping a journal, Harker writes his own book on his experiences, not only saving them for posterity but justifying them to himself and to other readers: ‘I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too diffuse; but now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy’ (ch. 2, p. 30). Thus Harker finds value in keeping a detailed journal as a way of lending authority to an otherwise unbelievable experience, a neat reflection of his behaviour as a reader. This attitude towards written ‘detail’ proves vital later in the novel, when Van Helsing asks Mina to ‘look up the copy of the diaries and find him the part of Harker’s journal at the Castle’ (ch. 25, p. 359). Once there, Van Helsing is able to find his way through the castle ‘by memory of [reading Jonathan’s] diary’ (ch. 27, p. 390).

The perfect foil to Jonathan Harker as a reader is Stoker’s archetypal villain Count Dracula. At the outset of the novel, Stoker immediately draws a parallel between Harker and Dracula as two highly literate researchers and avid readers. But each character’s purpose in reading – one for a greater good and the other for selfish gain – is an important factor, as Stoker presents it, in why one succeeds and the other fails. In an early scene, Harker discovers the impressive library in Dracula’s castle, filled with ‘a vast number of English books … all relating to England and English life and customs’ (ch. 2, p. 24). Dracula enters the library a moment later to demonstrate his only moment of warmth in the novel, an otherwise cold and calculating predator. ‘ “These friends” – and he laid his hand on some of the books – “have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many hours of pleasure”’ (ch. 2, p. 25). We are thus introduced to Dracula as ‘a devoted – one wants to say voracious – reader’ and prolific book collector.⁷ We come to understand that he has been amassing this library and studying its contents as ‘the work of centuries’ (ch. 24, p. 339) in order to naturalise himself to London life, and to navigate the logistics of his relocation smoothly. That he is so well-read impresses even his enemies, who often remark on his immense knowledge on matters about which he has only ever read, never experienced. Harker himself observes that: ‘For a man who was never in the country, and who did not evidently do much in the way of business, his knowledge and acumen were wonderful’ (ch. 3, p. 37). Van Helsing considers Dracula such a dangerous adversary in no small part because ‘He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, … and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay’ (ch. 23, p. 320).

As an isolated and solitary predator, Dracula finds reading an indispensable tool. Whereas Harker is sometimes a ‘naive reader’,⁸ Dracula is cunning, and sees texts as a potential danger in the hands of his enemies, attempting several times to destroy written and printed information. In his captivity, Harker on one occasion returns to his room to find that ‘every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda relating to the railways and travel, … in fact all that might be useful to me were I once outside the castle’ (ch. 4, p. 49). Later, with the Crew of Light in his pursuit, Dracula attempts to throw them off his trail by creating an erroneous shipping invoice, knowing they would track down and read any seemingly ‘authoritative’ documents they could find to locate him (ch. 26, p. 372).

Much like our heroes, Dracula is a prolific reader and a lover of books. Unlike the Crew of Light, however, he uses reading to advance a self-serving and destructive agenda and sees others’ reliance on reading as an opportunity to harm and deceive them. His primary threat is as a vampiric predator, of course, but Stoker also makes it clear that part of the danger Dracula presents is in his destruction, misuse and forgery of documents, his attempts to prevent others from reading and learning, and his disinterest in sharing information for the benefit of others. The Count is a persistent producer of ‘dis-information’, and in his destruction of documents, a manipulator of the truth. His handling of texts is both false and harmful – the very intersection of the types of ‘information disorder’ that threaten the value of truth and factuality in society.⁹ In today’s highly networked world, the production and spread of false and misleading information is of increasing concern in its ability to reach and influence larger audiences. There is a current need to ‘work together on solutions driven by research and experimentation to mitigate dis-information and significantly improve information literacy’.¹⁰ Just as this threat and its need for a communal solution is recognised today, so too Stoker recognised it as a suitably harmful tactic for a cunning villain, and one which was well combatted by a community working together.

On the other end of the spectrum of integrity, the speaker of Dracula’s core thesis on the power of reading is Dr Abraham Van Helsing, who says simply: ‘I have a great task to do, and at the beginning it is to know’ (ch. 14, p. 203). In other words, ahead of a significant and complicated challenge (in this case, foiling the Count), the very first step is to study and learn. Van Helsing is an eccentric Dutch scholar called in to help treat Lucy, the Count’s first English victim, and in turn to help fight Dracula. In response to this prompt for knowledge before all else, Harker fetches him ‘the bundle of papers’ (ch. 13, p. 204) comprising his evolving written record concerning the Count for Van Helsing to read on his train trip back to Amsterdam. Here, text is valued as the ideal medium for conveying information: portable, efficient, convenient and fixed.

As in that example, reading is almost always the preferred medium for communicating and disseminating information among the Crew of Light, and they remark throughout the novel on their expectation that reading will prepare them to ‘better enter [their] inquisition’ (ch. 27, p. 234). After Harker has spent a day gathering new information on the Count’s whereabouts, he returns to the Crew with new knowledge to share. Rather than ad lib his findings, he refers to his own diary, and ‘simply read it off to them as the best means of letting them get abreast of my own information’ (ch. 20, p. 285), preferring the text record he created over his own ability to recollect from memory.

Van Helsing is a serious, analytical reader, and, like Mina, an educator by profession. Yet he often withholds information from others if he believes it too soon to share: ‘Better he not know as yet; perhaps he shall never know’ (ch. 10, p. 131). Perhaps because he so strongly believes in the power of reading and writing, Van Helsing fears the potential damage of challenging what a reader believes to be true, if it is impossible to act wisely upon the knowledge gained. Like Harker, he spends extensive time in the story reading and researching his subject. Dr Seward once relays in his diary that: ‘Van Helsing sits in my study poring over the record prepared by the Harkers; he seems to think that by accurate knowledge of all details he will light upon some clue’ (ch. 20, p. 287). He is, for much of his time in the narrative, reading, studying or relating to others what he has gathered from doing so.

Often acknowledged as ‘a model reader’ both by critics of Dracula and by characters within the novel is Jonathan’s wife, Mina.¹¹ Mina Harker, a schoolteacher, is the acting secretary and archivist for the Crew of Light’s written and typed documents. As a major recorder of the novel’s events, and sole compiler of the other characters’ accounts, in a meta-narrative sense, Mina Harker is essentially the author of Dracula. Her work to preserve and disseminate a text record of the Crew of Light’s experiences is utterly indispensable, and positions her as not only a highly literate and dedicated reader, but also as the facilitator of others’ reading. At one moment, in an effort to get Van Helsing up to speed, Mina writes that she is ‘so glad I have type-written out my own journal, … I can hand it to him; it will save much questioning’ (ch. 14, p. 195), thus recognising the efficiency and clarity of reading over recounting aloud. With Mina’s written record, everyone receives the same information and account of events, all have the same set of resources to which to refer, and the information is stored in a stable, unchanging form.

Mina advocates for making text the standard medium among the Crew of Light when she offers to transcribe Dr Seward’s diary (which he records on phonograph cylinders) to a more user-friendly format for reference and dissemination. Seward is hesitant at first, but later recognises the value of her work: ‘What a good thing that Mrs. Harker put my cylinders into type! We never could have found the dates otherwise’ (ch. 17, p. 241). As a facilitator of others’ reading, Mina also encourages critical thought and analysis. ‘I shall give you a paper to read’, she tells Van Helsing, ‘I dare not say anything of it; you will read for yourself and judge’ (ch. 14, p. 200). Here, Mina sees it as her job simply to impart information, and values the reader’s ability and indeed right as a reader to synthesise the information into knowledge that can inform actions.

Jo nicely summarises the significance of Mina’s work to generate reading material for the others with two points: that ‘Mina’s production or typewriting is a means of facilitating the characters’ collective reading’, and that ‘Dracula’s disempowerment goes hand in hand with the increase in the number of texts that Mina reproduces.’¹² Radick exemplifies Mina’s arc as a reader in speaking to the main principle of reading in Dracula: ‘Mina reads through the record she has kept of their experiences with the vampire. Only after doing this and consulting other resources is she able to correctly hypothesize Dracula’s strategy, leading to their ultimate success.… she can only synthesize the information once she has done her reading.’¹³ In other words, Mina’s work in synthesising this information through reading generates half the power she cultivates in the fight; the other half comes from distributing that information to her cohort, replicating and therefore multiplying the empowerment she gained from reading by facilitating that reading among others. In her dedication to this work, Mina exemplifies the fourth ‘advanced’ skillset of information literacy: ethically communicating synthesised knowledge, which includes both sharing findings with peers, and archiving work for future accessibility.¹⁴ It is no surprise that the novel’s most steadfast and capable reader, and disseminator of texts, demonstrates the highest goals of modern information literacy skills. Stoker very consistently characterises Mina’s expertise and consideration in this regard throughout the novel, and indeed, her contributions to her reading community play a very significant role in overcoming the threat they all face.

‘Authoritative texts’ and critical thinking

As the most literate of the group, Mina is the character Stoker employs to teach a vital skill of information literacy: critical thinking about what qualifies a text as authoritative.¹⁵ Later in the novel, she also suffers the deleterious effects of suppressing access to information, which will be explored at the end of this section.

While taking a walk in the graveyard in Whitby, Mina and her companion Lucy meet an old sailor, Mr Swales. In a previous interaction with Mina, Swales had revealed himself as a deep sceptic of the written word, declaring newspapers ‘full of fool-talk’ (ch. 6, p. 72). In this unusual scene, he cautions Mina and Lucy not to trust everything they read, but to consider the motives of those behind the words. His outburst is an education in critical thinking for Mina, a lesson on scrutiny toward the authority of a source, bias in writing and the fallibility of written information. He rants about ‘illsome beuk-bodies’ (book people), religious authorities ‘printin’ lies on paper’ and most importantly, the writing all around them, literally in stone: the headstones, falling over ‘with the weight o’ the lies wrote on them’ (ch. 6, p. 73). Swales picks out examples around them, pointing to graves known to be empty despite the claim ‘here lies’ (ch. 6, p. 74), and falsified causes of death. One can ‘read the small-print of the lies from here’ he says (ch. 6, p. 75). Mina counters at first that tombstones are there to please the deceased’s relatives, but Swales, averse to any justification for misrepresentation in writing, argues: ‘How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is wrote over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be lies?’ (ch. 6, p. 75). As something like an oral historian of Whitby, Swales demonstrates scepticism of the half-truths and deceptions written in stone all around him, and disdain for the perceived authority of the written word. His perspective presents a counterbalance to the virtuous readership of the novel’s heroes, who, before they learn better, rarely question the authenticity or veracity of what they read.

Mina records this lesson in critical thinking around texts in her journal entry of 1 August. It proves to have had an effect on her readership two days later, when she rereads without pause a letter she had received from Jonathan a few weeks prior, but one we know Dracula forced him to falsify. ‘I look at that last letter of his, but somehow it does not satisfy me. It does not read like him, and yet it is his writing’ (ch. 6, p. 82). Even if she cannot put her finger on why the letter is suspicious, after this lesson with Swales, she has acquired a significant new lens for scrutinising what she reads. She returns to a text, and for the first time evaluates it for authority, accuracy and reliability.¹⁶

During the second half of the novel, the men comprising the Crew of Light, at Van Helsing’s initiation, agree to begin withholding the information in their diaries and correspondence from Mina, believing that their ‘growing knowledge would be torture to her’ (ch. 20, p. 284). Despite the fact that until this point in the story, the men believed ‘it is due to [Mina’s] energy and brains and foresight that the whole story is put together’ in writing (ch. 19, p. 265), they conclude that the work is ‘too great a strain for a woman to bear’ and thus ‘henceforth our work is to be a sealed book to her’ both literally and metaphorically (ch. 19, p. 271). The next day, Mina recounts her troubled sleep the night before, when it becomes evident to us that she has been attacked by Dracula, making her his latest unwitting victim (ch. 19, p. 274). Her vulnerability is immediate; as soon as she is barred from the community of readers, she becomes defenceless, falling prey to the vampire. The following day, Mina reports feeling ‘terribly weak and spiritless. I spent all day yesterday trying to read, or lying down dozing’ (ch. 19, p. 277). Her readerly spirit is indomitable: facing not only the life-draining predation of Dracula, but also the forced ignorance of censorship, she musters what little waking energy she has in attempting to read.

Within two days, the men discover that Mina has been attacked by the Count, and decide no longer to withhold information from her (ch. 22, p. 308). She is restored access to ‘all the papers or diaries and phonographs’ and permitted ‘to keep the record as she had done before’ (ch. 22, p. 309). Thus the group recognises that, despite their best intentions to protect a supposedly vulnerable member of their group, restricting access to information caused more harm than good, and while Mina is not yet out of harm’s way, the community is safer and stronger with free and equal readership than it is when placing restrictions on knowledge.

Free and public access to information is understood as a foundation for an information-literate society. In its report on information literacy, the ALA establishes that ‘all people should have the right to information which can enhance their lives’.¹⁷ Dracula powerfully demonstrates the importance of such a right, with Dracula’s easy ability to prey on Mina the moment she loses that right. As discussed earlier, an informed community is required to overcome malicious intent in an information society. Here, the opposite holds true as well. When the reading community of Dracula is fractured, so too does it lose power against Dracula.

Reading with virtue

As Jo succinctly states, ‘the most important activity that brings about the destruction of Dracula is the act of reading’.¹⁸ In a broader sense, one of Stoker’s strongest themes in Dracula is that reading can arm us as a community with the intellectual tools necessary to face down an existential threat. In that sense, my argument takes a decidedly utopian view of Dracula as defined by Anne DeLong: ‘Utopian readings emphasize the novel’s exchange of information as a bonding between the characters, one that serves to cement not only their relationships but also their common purpose.’¹⁹ DeLong quotes Leah Richards’s summation that: ‘To know everything about Dracula is to know how to destroy him. It is information, gathered into a collaborative and comprehensive account [i.e. the book itself], that enables the group to defeat Dracula.’²⁰ The Crew of Light are empowered in their community effort because of their shared pursuit of knowledge; they are stronger against their adversary because they have studied and learned all they could about him, together.

In Dracula, Bram Stoker presents both our villain and our heroes as equally skilled and diligent researchers; in fact, despite his loss, the Count may indeed be a shrewder reader than any one individual in the Crew of Light. Where Stoker differentiates the value of any of their information literacy skills is in the integrity of the agenda that their reading serves, and in social participation. When our heroes ‘read together and form a communal identity – a reading community’ they build ‘a solidarity that will maintain their bond throughout the novel’.²¹ This reading community stays on the same page, so to speak, and in so doing, they form a shared narrative that motivates them, validates what they have experienced and thought, elucidates their shared purpose and values, unifies them in a strategy to protect one another and, as fully informed as they can be, prepares them to face the danger that threatens them and humanity at large. We also see that when members of this community withhold information from one another, or restrict access to new knowledge, they become fractured and vulnerable.

When Van Helsing presents some of his research on vampires to his cohort, he explains that although Dracula is well-educated and well-read, he is ‘without heart or conscience’ (ch. 18, p. 254). In contrast, the Crew of Light are dedicated to their work ‘for the safety of one we love [and] for the good of mankind’ (ch. 24, p. 341). Van Helsing believes that, despite the Count’s acumen and cunning, the Crew will succeed because Dracula’s work is ‘selfish and therefore small’ (ch. 25, p. 360). Our heroes arm themselves with knowledge through reading in order to protect others and prevent harm to innocent people, and are ultimately victorious in their fight. Our villain, too, arms himself with knowledge through reading, but in order to cause harm and take innocent lives. In Dracula, the power of knowledge gained through reading is universally attainable, but information, as a tool, is stronger within a network of people, and stronger still amongst those who do not abuse that power but wield it for the benefit of their community.

Reading in the new information age is something of an equaliser: it is easier than ever to create and disseminate work to a public audience, and similarly, anyone can find and use resources that support an agenda or confirm a bias. The ‘diminishing role of facts and analysis’ in modern life appears symbiotic with the new, multitudinous platforms for information spread, the erosion of trust in social institutions, and the intensity of political division.²² In Dracula, we are shown the virtue and power of reading with compassion, conscience, conversation, generosity and critical thinking in a world of overwhelmingly bountiful access to ideas and information. The character of Count Dracula represents an existential threat to the human population. To our heroes, he presents not only a mortal threat, but also a threat to their sense of order, morality, human dignity and fairness. From the first glimpse of unease to the height of danger, these characters are reading incessantly. They read to make sense of what they have experienced, to prepare for the future, and to inform one another. At the end of the day, they also read to ease their minds. For the Crew of Light, reading is crucial to every component of their activism, and an exercise in their ethics of building community knowledge.

For the extra-textual reader, emulation of the Crew of Light’s dedication to seeking, scrutinising, sharing and understanding information may enable us to advocate better for our moral convictions, cite recorded information that empowers our choices and band together with a wealth of knowledge to foster an informed society that values reading as a part of learning, living and caring for our communities. Indeed, the ALA pronounces information literacy a ‘survival skill’ crucial to intelligent decision-making, ‘effective citizenship’ and the practice of democracy itself.²³ Bram Stoker’s Dracula moves beyond lurid horror, although it excels at that, and continues to inspire the genre well over a century later. At its deepest level it is, in fact, a rich compendium of democratic reading behaviours, an information literacy cautionary tale and the success story of a healthy, aspirational knowledge society. As we aspire to be ethical, engaged citizens in an information age, facing complex uncertainties, we have, as Van Helsing says, a great task to do, and in the beginning, it is to know.

Notes

1. 1.  Caryn Radick, ‘ “Complete and in Order”: Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Archival Profession’, American Archivist, 76 (2013), 502–20 (p. 503).

2. 2.  Sunggyung Jo, ‘ “Vampiric Reading”: Dracula and Readerly Desire’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 61 (2019), 225–43 (p. 226).

3. 3.  Christopher Craft coined the name ‘Crew of Light’ to refer to the novel’s male protagonists Jonathan Harker, Abraham Van Helsing, John Seward, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood. In this chapter, the use of this name refers to these characters plus Mina Harker. See Christopher Craft, ‘Kiss Me with Those Red Lips: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, Representations, 8 (1984), 107–33 (p. 130).

4. 4.  See for example: https://www.mtu.edu/library/instruction/information-literacy/ and https://www.gvsu.edu/library/ilcc, two rubrics from university libraries that include the ethical use of information, including sharing with peers, as part of the information literacy skill set.

5. 5.  American Library Association, Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report (2006), http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential, accessed 22 November 2022.

6. 6.  Bram Stoker, Dracula, ed. by Brooke Allen (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003), p. 5. Further references are in the text.

7. 7.  Garrett Stewart, ‘ “Count Me In”: Dracula, Hypnotic Participation, and the Late-Victorian Gothic of Reading’, Horror Issue, special issue of Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 5 (1994), 1–18 (p. 12).

8. 8.  Harriet Hustis, ‘Black and White and Read All Over: Performative Textuality in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, Studies in the Novel, 33 (2001), 19–33 (p. 23).

9. 9.  Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan, Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policymaking (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2017), p. 20.

10. 10.  Wardle and Derakhshan, Information Disorder, p. 79.

11. 11.  Jo, ‘Vampiric Reading’, p. 232.

12. 12.  Jo, ‘Vampiric Reading’, p. 234.

13. 13.  Radick, ‘Complete and in Order’, p. 508.

14. 14.  Sarah Beaubien et al., Information Literacy Core Competencies (Allendale, MI: Grand Valley State University, 2009), section on core competency #4. See n. 4.

15. 15.  Beaubien, section on core competency #3.

16. 16.  Beaubien, section on core competency #3.1.B.

17. 17.  American Library Association, Final Report.

18. 18.  Jo, ‘Vampiric Reading’, p. 226.

19. 19.  Anne DeLong, ‘Communication Technologies in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Utopian or Dystopian?’, in Bram Stoker and the Late Victorian World, ed. by Matthew Gibson and Sabine Lenore Müller (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2018), pp. 101–19 (p. 116).

20. 20.  Leah Richards, ‘Mass Production and the Spread of Information in Dracula: “Proofs of So Wild a Story”’, English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, 52 (2009), 440–57 (p. 440).

21. 21.  Jo, ‘Vampiric Reading’, p. 235.

22. 22.  Jennifer Kavanaugh and Michael D. Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018), see figure 5.1, p. xvii, and the section on ‘confirmation bias’, pp. 82–5.

23. 23.  American Library Association, Final Report.

Bibliography of secondary literature

• American Library Association, Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report (2006), http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential
• Beaubien, Sarah et al., Information Literacy Core Competencies (Allendale, MI: Grand Valley State University, 2009)
• Craft, Christopher, ‘Kiss Me with Those Red Lips: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, Representations, 8 (1984), 107–33
• DeLong, Anne, ‘Communication Technologies in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Utopian or Dystopian?’, in Bram Stoker and the Late Victorian World, ed. by Matthew Gibson and Sabine Lenore Müller (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2018), pp. 101–19
• Hustis, Harriet, ‘Black and White and Read All Over: Performative Textuality in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, Studies in the Novel, 33 (2001), 19–33
• Jo, Sunggyung, ‘ “Vampiric Reading”: Dracula and Readerly Desire’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 61 (2019), 225–43
• Kavanaugh, Jennifer and Michael D. Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018)
• Radick, Caryn, ‘ “Complete and in Order”: Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Archival Profession’, American Archivist, 76 (2013), 502–20
• Richards, Leah, ‘Mass Production and the Spread of Information in Dracula: “Proofs of So Wild a Story”’, English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, 52 (2009), 440–57
• Stewart, Garrett, ‘ “Count Me In”: Dracula, Hypnotic Participation, and the Late-Victorian Gothic of Reading’, Horror Issue, special issue of Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 5 (1994), 1–18
• Wardle, Claire and Hossein Derakhshan, Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policymaking (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2017)