*Dracula* was published in London by Archibald Constable and Company in May 1897. 26 May is often given as the publication date, though it is safer to treat it as probable rather than exact.

Bram Stoker’s novel reached the British market as a gothic story before Dracula became a figure of film, costume and shorthand. The book drew on older vampire material but placed the threat within a recognisably Victorian world.

The Count comes from outside Britain, but the danger moves into British settings: Whitby, London, homes, professional rooms and places where respectable order is supposed to hold. The novel uses castles and folklore, but also diaries, letters, telegrams, phonographs, railways, medical notes and organised records.

That mixture matters. *Dracula* is full of old fear being chased through modern systems. Its characters try to record, diagnose, travel, classify and act. The supernatural does not stay safely in the past or at a distance. It arrives by ship, enters streets and houses, and must be addressed by people who trust evidence, medicine, and machines.

*Dracula* was not immediately the dominant vampire story it later became. Its reach grew later, through theatre, film and repeated adaptation. But the 1897 publication remains the starting point: a London-published Victorian gothic novel that gave English fiction one of its most persistent monsters.