page_title: The Historian
section_title: Composition and publication
hierarchical_section_title: The Historian / Background and publication / Composition and publication
context_page_description: The Historian is the 2005 debut novel of American author Elizabeth Kostova. The plot blends the history and folklore of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula. Kostova's father told her stories about Dracula when she was a child, and later in life she was inspired to turn the experience into a novel. She worked on the book for ten years and then sold it within a few months to Little, Brown and Company, which bought it for US$2 million.
  The Historian has been described as a combination of genres, including Gothic novel, adventure novel, detective fiction, travelogue, postmodern historical novel, epistolary epic, and historical thriller. Kostova was intent on writing a serious work of literature and saw herself as an inheritor of the Victorian style. Although based in part on Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Historian is not a horror novel, but rather an eerie tale. It is concerned with history's role in society and representation in books, as well as the nature of good and evil. As Kostova explains, "Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history."
context_section_description: Five years later, in 1994, when Kostova was hiking in the Appalachian Mountains with her husband, she had a flashback to those storytelling moments with her father and asked herself "what if the father were spinning his Dracula tales to his entranced daughter and Dracula were listening in? What if Dracula were still alive?" She immediately scratched out seven pages of notes into her writer's notebook. Two days later, she started work on the novel. At the time she was teaching English as a second language, creative writing and composition classes at universities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, entered the writing program at the University of Michigan and finished the book as she was obtaining her Master of Fine Arts degree.
  
  Kostova did extensive research about Eastern Europe and Vlad Țepeș. She found a vampire-killing kit at the Mercer Museum, which included a pistol, silver bullets, a crucifix, a wooden stake, and powdered garlic.
   As she was writing, she posted maps of Eastern Europe in her office and constructed a chart to help her keep track of the book's timelines. Her husband, whom she had met in Bulgaria, assisted her with related geographical descriptions and diction. It took her ten years to finish the novel.
  Kostova finished the novel in January 2004 and sent it to a potential literary agent in March. Two months later and within two days of sending out her manuscript to publishers, Kostova was offered a deal – she refused it. The rights to the book were auctioned off and Little, Brown and Company bought them for US$2 million (US$30,000 is typical for a first novel from an unknown author). Publishers Weekly explained the high price as a result of a bidding war between firms' believing that they might have the next Da Vinci Code within their grasp. One vice-president and associate publisher said, "Given the success of The Da Vinci Code, everybody around town knows how popular the combination of thriller and history can be and what a phenomenon it can become." Little, Brown and Company subsequently sold the rights in 28 countries. The book was published in the United States on 14 June 2005.
caption: Kostova had her "eureka moment" when she realized that the location of Vlad Țepeș's remains was unknown.[9]
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