Bram Stoker

Vlad the Impaler - Count Dracula

This is Vlad the Impaler - better known as Dracula.

Usually I would never lead a reader to the Wiki as it is chock full of what researchers call "Entertainment Tonight History".  This article, however, took some reading  and checking of footnotes and it seems to have jumped through a lot of the hoops that make for good historical research. 

Today, some 117 years ago, Stoker publisch Dracula, his most successful novel. Stocker would publish 16 other novels but this is the one most think of and is still the subject du jour on a lot of cable networks. Originally the main character was called "Count Wampry".  However on a trip to the Yorkshire Public Library during a vacation, he came across a book on Wallachia and Moldavia and in it was reference to our Vladimir and his nickname Dracula.  Now you know. 

There is a thing called "primary sources" meaning that the trail back in history comes to an end at the event itself and all the rest of it is just stuff written about it. Dracula's "primary source" is Vlad the Impaler; all the rest is stuffr written about him.  An event happens but one time. Everything else is just stuff written about the event that is written about the writing about the event.  So you look, as an historian, for the Incunabulum or ""the earliest stages or first traces in the development of anything"...the first account, the first writing about something, the eyewitness or the speech or document read, performed, whatever - the primary source.

This one came from the Yorkshire Public Library.