Dracula | Critical Overview

When Dracula was first published, critics found little literary merit in the novel. A reviewer for the Athenaeum wrote in 1897, "Dracula is highly sensational, but it is wanting in the constructive art as well as in the higher literary sense." However, even those critics who did not believe that the novel was literary acknowledged it as a horror work that would appeal to its audience. The Athenaeum reviewer says, "Isolated scenes and touches are probably quite uncanny enough to please those for whom they are designed." In...

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