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Dracula's Cold-Chain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2024

Susan Zieger Open the ORCID record for Susan Zieger [Opens in a new window]
Susan Zieger*
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University of California, Riverside, United States
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Abstract

Logistics is the science and art of moving goods, people, and information efficiently to maximize profit; though it has become synonymous with the rise of the shipping container, its history is as old as trade itself. At the end of the nineteenth century, the ancient human action of loading and shipping boxes became part of a globalizing network of refrigerated supply chains and transoceanic shipping. Appearing briefly as a detail in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897), the “cold chain” nonetheless orchestrates the plot and governs the vampiric mythology. This temperature-cooled supply and distribution network imbued the times, spaces, and aesthetics of human life with the new capability to ship perishable food, or in the novel's metaphor, “un-death.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 52 , Special Issue 2: Infrastructure , Summer 2024 , pp. 355 - 374
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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