Sometime in the late nineteenth century, Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, is traveling to the Castle Dracula, which is located in Transylvania, in order to finalize a transfer of real estate in England to Count Dracula. Harker becomes extremely nervous when all of the local peasants react in fear after they hear of his destination; nevertheless, he continues on to the castle until he meets an emissary of the Count in the Borgo Pass. The mysterious coach driver continues on to the castle, arriving in pitch darkness, to the accompaniment of howling wolves.
Even though his accomodations are comfortable, Harker finds Count Dracula to be a pale, gaunt, thin man, rather strange, and Harker is mortified when, after accidentally cutting himself shaving, the Count lunges at Harker's throat in "demoniac fury." Harker soon finds himself imprisoned within the castle and assailed by three seductive female vampires, whom he can barely stave off. Harker also discovers the Count's secret — that is, the Count survives by drinking the blood of human beings — and, now, he is intent on killing Harker. The Count escapes Jonathan's attempt to kill him, and he swiftly leaves the castle with fifty boxes of earth, bound for England. The last we hear of Jonathan Harker, he is weak and sick, left alone with no visible means of escape from the castle.
The novel then shifts to England, where Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray, is visiting her friend Lucy Westenra, who has accepted the marriage proposal of Arthur Holmwood, while rejecting the proposals of Dr. John Seward, head of a lunatic asylum, and Quincey Morris, an American from Texas, currently visiting Holmwood. Mina's two main concerns are that Lucy has taken up her old habit of sleepwalking, and that it is a long time since she has heard from her own fiancé, Jonathan.
