DRACULA was not the first of his kind in literature. On the same night of swapping ghost stories that led to Mary Shelley creating Frankenstein, Byron came up with an idea for a vampire story. It was written down by his lover and personal physician, John Polidori, as "The Vampyre" and published in The New Monthly Magazine in 1819. Varney the Vampyre was written by James Malcolm Rymer and published the year Stoker was born. Sheridan Le Fanu - a Dubliner - wrote a novel about a female vampire, Carmilla, in 1872.

As for historical sources, there is Dracula's namesake, Vlad Dracula, the 15th century Wallachian prince who, though not a vampire, was fond of impaling vast numbers of his Turkish enemies. In 1732, Herbert Mayo gave a chilling description of a vampire being dug up in Belgrade in his book On Truths Contained In Popular Superstitions.

Barbara Belford suggests many other inspirations for Stoker's Dracula, including Irish folklore, Macbeth, the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, the symbols of the Tarot, Stoker's interest in hypnotism, and his brother George's travels in Transylvania. Stoker's son Noel said that the idea for Dracula came to his father "in a nightmarish dream after eating too much dressed crab".

Whatever its origins, the book has become an enduring bestseller, second only to the Bible in popularity, says Dennis McIntyre, director of the Bram Stoker Summer School: "Dracula has been translated into every language in the world. It has never been out of print." He notes that An Gum will republish the Irish edition of Dracula this year.