Happy birthday Dracula

Or at least creator thereof, Bram Stoker.  Yes, today is the birthday of the man who brought the Gothic into mainstream, and gave us a character that transcends the ages, just like he did in the novel.  Thomas McDonald has a worthy salute over at his blog.  FWIW, I don't bemoan the prose style of the late 19th century, or the cumbersome high Victorian that permeates the book.  For me, that's part of the charm.  In fact, as our own society devolves into a Twitter era of speech by tweet, I can't help but long for a bit of the respect given to the English language that was more common all those years ago.  Nonetheless, here's a pint raised to the man who made Vampires so awesome they will probably even survive the Twilight series.  For me, the first section of the book, dealing with Jonathan Harker's arrival and eventual confrontation with the reality of Dracula, stands as one of the great literary passages; like McDonald points out, the meeting of the three brides of Dracula is hard to forget.