Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jonathan Harker visits Count Dracula at his castle in the Carpathian Mountains and escapes after being abandoned. Dracula travels to England on the ship Demeter, where he preys upon Lucy Westenra before Jonathan and others attempt to stop him.
Bram Stoker wrote the manuscript during summer holidays in Scotland between 1890 and 1897. The earliest dated notes from the 8th of March 1890 contain an outline of the novel's opening, and a 27-chapter outline was written in February 1892.
Academic consensus rejects Vlad the Impaler as the primary model for Count Dracula, favoring influences like Henry Irving instead. Scholars note the Count's tall and lean physique and aquiline nose were inspired by Irving's performance as Shylock in a Lyceum Theatre production of The Merchant of Venice.
A copyright filing error placed the story into the public domain because Stoker failed to comply with United States copyright law. Universal Studios learned of this failure in the 1930s, which prematurely placed the novel into the public domain in the United States.
Scholars John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart note that the novel and its characters have been adapted for film, television, video games and animation over 700 times. Nearly 1000 additional appearances exist in comic books and on the stage.