A new edition of Dracula, the extremely influential 1897 gothic novel written by Bram Stoker, includes a huge amount of background information about the book and its influence on the culture.

The power of the original novel Dracula lay in author Bram Stoker’s ability to make Satan real to materialistic late-nineteenth-century Europeans and Americans, as was clearly the author’s intention. Dracula still has the power to evoke the same thoughts today, and that accounts for its great and enduring influence in the 111 years since its original publication.

Judging by the description of the contents, the annotations will include much nonsense purveying bizarre, silly theories about the book’s underlying meanings, of which a multitude have been written during the past century. However, there are a couple of things that may make it uniquely worth having.

These are, one, an introduction by sci-fi/fantasy author Neil Gaiman, and two, a detailed examination of the original typescript, which is described as having a "shockingly different" ending not previously available to scholars.

Click here for more information about The New Annotated Dracula.

Update: John J. Miller of National Review provides additional details on the volume in this article from the Wall Street Journal.