Moving between England and Transylvania, and told through a miscellany of forms including letters, diary entries and newspaper reports, Bram Stoker's 1897 novel unleashed the infamous undead count upon the world. Although the Count himself and his nemesis - vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing - have become the best-known figures from the tale, it is English solicitor Jonathan Harker who threads the story together, and begins it on visiting what he takes to be an innocent aristocratic client in the Carpathian Mountains. The highly dramatic story, involving intercontinental pursuit, love and grisly death, helped to define the gothic genre. Although Dracula received contemporary critical acclaim (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to the author: 'I think it is the very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years') it was not until the twentieth century that the novel took a firm grip on the popular imagination.