Dracula genre Gothic fiction
Influence
Dracula was not the first piece of literature to depict vampires, but the novel has nonetheless come to dominate both popular and scholarly treatments of vampire fiction. Count Dracula is the first character to come to mind when people discuss vampires.  Dracula's succeeded by drawing together folklore, legend, vampire fiction and the conventions of the Gothic novel. Wendy Doniger described the novel as vampire literature's "centrepiece, rendering all other vampires BS or AS". It profoundly shaped the popular understanding of how vampires function, including their strengths, weaknesses, and other characteristics. Bats had been associated with vampires before Dracula as a result of the vampire bat's existence—for example, Varney the Vampire (1847) included an image of a bat on its cover illustration. But Stoker deepened the association by making Dracula able to transform into one. That was, in turn, quickly taken up by film studios looking for opportunities to use special effects. Patrick McGrath notes that many of the Count's characteristics have been adopted by artists succeeding Stoker in depicting vampires, turning those fixtures into clichés. Aside from the Count's ability to transform, McGrath specifically highlights his hatred of garlic, sunlight, and crucifixes. William Hughes writes critically of the Count's cultural omnipresence, noting that the character of Dracula has "seriously inhibited" discussions of the undead in Gothic fiction.Adaptations of the novel and its characters have contributed to its enduring popularity. Even within academic discussions, the boundaries between Stoker's novel and the character's adaptation across a range of media have effectively been blurred. Dacre Stoker suggests that Stoker's failure to comply with United States copyright law contributed to its enduring status, writing that writers and producers did not need to pay a licence fee to use the character.
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