I’m also reading Dracula and it absolutely rules—so much about the anxieties of empire built into this gothic novel, and Stoker really uses the epistolary form to its fullest potential. Really fun summer read!
I love it so much. You name an anxiety, Stoker has it. Foreigners! Women! Sexuality (both homo and hetero)! Disease! Empire! The greatest gift to undergrad lit paper topics.
I read it in sixth grade, before I had any idea wtf was going on. It was way over the head of twelve year-old me. You are reminding me I need to revisit it.