The start of chapter one is fairly mundane – it’s essential that Stoker establishes a familiar and believable background for his story. Therefore, Jonathan Harker comes across as a typical traveller, writing about the food, hotels, people and scenery he encounters on his journey. He treats the superstitions of the local people as a quaint oddity, and in one line that never fails to amuse me, reminds himself to ask Count Dracula about them (“so, Count, about how the local people blanch and cross themselves when your name is mentioned and how they talk about you using terms like ‘Satan’ and ‘hell’...”).
Some other commentary:
“I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.”
Transylvania was, at the time the book was written, the easternmost province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (it is now the westernmost part of Romania). The ‘frontier’ referred to later in the chapter is that between Austrian Transylvania and Romanian Bukovina. This map gives a rough idea of the location of three duchies being discussed.
“In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it.”
Dracula makes the claim that the Székely people are descended from the Huns. Today, it is more widely accepted that they are of genuine Magyar (Hungarian) descent. They are Hungarian-speaking, and the name ‘Székely’ simply means ‘frontier guard’ – they were most likely Hungarians transplanted to guard the border of the kingdom. They were the subjects of ‘Romanianisation’ efforts during the Ceauşescu regime, and some today seek an independent Székely state in Transylvania.
German was the principal language of government within the Austrian Empire, and the Carpathians had a large German population (these are the ‘Saxons’ Stoker refers to). They are descended from Teutonic Knights who settled the area in the Middle Ages, invited there by the King of Hungary to defend the passes from the Mongols, and were mostly expelled at the end of the Second World War. This is why Harker is able to get around speaking German.
“Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light,and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky.”
There has been discussion on the historical inspiration for Castle Dracula. Various castles in Transylvania promote themselves as ‘Dracula’s castle’.
Bram Stoker's Dracula - Chapter 1
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Túrin Turambar
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narya
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Yes, I'm reading. I'm just not feeling all that inspired at the moment.
The caricature within a caricature, of "typical" Englishman observing everything that was not "typical" to him was charming. Others have offered quotes already, but I particularly liked:
The caricature within a caricature, of "typical" Englishman observing everything that was not "typical" to him was charming. Others have offered quotes already, but I particularly liked:
It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus
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Túrin Turambar
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Impenitent
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Alatar reminded me that you guys had tried to organize a group reading of it.
He never gets on this site! 
<grumble, grumble>Ahem, yes, that was actually me.
I'm just past the part where they "kill" the Un-Dead Lucy. I can imagine that was a pretty shocking scene at the time.
I don't typically read forewords, but I happened to catch a bit of this one as I "flipped" through. It mentioned several scenes that appear to hint at fellatio. I'll, um, have to look for that to quote here. If I've read one of those scenes already, I didn't really see it.
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Túrin Turambar
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I didn't expect to see this thread pop back up 
.
Obviously a lot of scenes in the book are sexual in one way or another, although I don't recall any that hint at particular sex acts. Part of Stoker's skill was that he didn't simply make his evil repulsive and horrifying, but overlaid it with a hint of allurement that we can relate to. This makes a reader far more uncomfortable than people simply being cut up, etc. Particularly for a Victorian audience. It's also highly effective for being subtle, something lost on most directors of modern horror films.
.Obviously a lot of scenes in the book are sexual in one way or another, although I don't recall any that hint at particular sex acts. Part of Stoker's skill was that he didn't simply make his evil repulsive and horrifying, but overlaid it with a hint of allurement that we can relate to. This makes a reader far more uncomfortable than people simply being cut up, etc. Particularly for a Victorian audience. It's also highly effective for being subtle, something lost on most directors of modern horror films.