Every week, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

From Sookie Stackhouse, through Victoria Winters, the lineage of vampire girlfriends ultimately leads back to Lucy, the victim of Count Dracula.

MINA MURRAY’S JOURNAL

26 July.–I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here. It is like whispering to one’s self and listening at the same time. And there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan. I had not heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very concerned, but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a letter from him. I had written asking him if he had heard, and he said the enclosed had just been received. It is only a line dated from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home. That is not like Jonathan. I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy.

Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided that I am to lock the door of our room every night.

Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place.

Dracula is an epistolary novel, told in letters, journal & diary snippets and newspaper articles. It is not a sexual romp as you often find in vampire novels these days – but readers of the Twilght series may find echos of the sublimated sex from that series.

As with all epistolary novels, the form sometimes causes awkward constructions. See my emphasis below.

They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea. I must ask the old man about this. He is coming this way…

Of course it is not the only awkward moment . . .

He is a funny old man. He must be awfully old, for his face is gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree. He tells me that he is nearly a hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical person, for when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White Lady at the abbey he said very brusquely,

“I wouldn’t fash masel’ about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don’t say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn’t in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an’ the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin’ cured herrin’s and drinkin’ tea an’ lookin’ out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel’ who’d be bothered tellin’ lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk.”

I am not quite sure what this is about, other than a little foreshadowing.

You can find traces of vampires in folklore and literature, but Dracula is the novel that engendered all the vampire novels we read today. I hope the “comers and trippers, an’ the like” here will enjoy this very popular download.

Download your free copy of “Dracula” by Bram Stoker here >>>