»Dracula

The Norton Critical Edition of this astonishing, vivid, and thrilling novel adds to its readability. When reading a book so steeped in jargon (for example, backsheesh, var. baksheesh) I find the inline annotations immensely useful. Similarly for Moby-Dick, for which Norton Critical Ed. I suffered through several incomplete bookshops in San Francisco before turning up the Second Edition in Los Angeles some years ago. And like Moby-Dick, Dracula has strong use of vernacular (Scots brogue, Eastern-European slang and Romany-inflected phrases), as well as the maritime vocabulary that seeps in to any book which employs the ship as a practical metaphor.
Bram Stoker articulated the action of this novel through letters, phonograph transcripts, and primarily through diary entries: the protagonists' journals, captain's logs, and newspaper cuttings. Not any part of the narrative is impartial third-person: every paragraph is full of the passion (or dispassion, in the case of Dr Seward) and perspective of its author.