Blogging the Classics

Dracula Blogged is a blogging project which started last week (03May05) to serialize the novel Dracula in its entirety over the next six months. The blogger, Bryan Alexander, will post the novel according to its own calendar, just as if the narrator, Jonathan Harker, were a modern blogger who was recording his thoughts from Transylvania.

Here's a sample from the entry for May 5. The Castle, as Jonathan Harker travels to Dracula's castle:

When I got on the coach, the driver had not taken his seat, and I saw him talking to the landlady.

They were evidently talking of me, for every now and then they looked at me, and some of the people who were sitting on the bench outside the door--came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them pityingly. I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd, so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out.

I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were "Ordog"--Satan, "Pokol"--hell, "stregoica"--witch, "vrolok" and "vlkoslak"--both mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either werewolf or vampire. (Mem., I must ask the Count about these superstitions.)

Here we have a painless and amusing way to read the entire Dracula novel in the space of six cliff-hanging months.

Dracula Blogged is not the first to serialize a classic as a weblog. One of the first and most logical is Samuel Pepys's Diary which Phil Gyford blogs as The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Pepys is the renowned 17th century diarist who lived in London. His daily entries lend themselves perfectly to the weblog format; reading the Diary as a blog gives it freshness and immediacy.