Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller of Memorial University has set out to drive a stake through the heart of the many mistakes made and misconceptions held about Bram Stoker and his famous novel. And speaking of stakes - Count Dracula was not killed by one. That fate awaited a different character in the novel.

Yet the numerous mistaken beliefs about the book and its writer are buried so deep in the public psyche that even the Encyclopedia Americana's 1993 edition states that Dracula ends with the lusty count having a stake driven through his heart, "which is totally wrong," says Prof. Miller. "How a novel ends is easy to determine - you read it," she says. "The person who wrote that obviously never read the book. It's a popular misconception that is based on movies rather than on the novel."

Miller's new book about Dracula has just been published by Desert Island Books and will be distributed in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. Dracula: Sense & Nonsense cites 75 mistakes and distortions about the novel and Stoker, and how they arose. Each entry of the encyclopedia-style book offers a corrective account of that specific topic.

"I've been quite alarmed over the last few years at how many errors and misconceptions are in existence about the author and about how the novel came about - what the inspirations of the novel were," says Miller. "I decided, as a scholar, that maybe it was time to set the record straight."

The main misconception about Dracula is that the fictional character is based on the historical figure Vlad the Impaler, a Transylvanian prince of legendary cruelty. "That's commonly held," says Miller. "Almost everyone believes that is so. My response to it is that that's nonsense."

The correlation between the fictional and historical Dracula dates to 1972 and a book called In Search of Dracula, whose authors speculated about the connection. "Unfortunately, for many people the speculation then became fact," says Miller, explaining that she took the role of "literary detective" for this project.

Bram Stoker had already begun writing Dracula when he came upon a library book while on vacation. In it, he read a short account of a prince Dracula who lived in a region of Romania in the 15th century. But Stoker did not know about, let alone research and discover, the many sordid tales told about Vlad the Impaler, says Miller.

"There was a Dracula, and Bram Stoker borrowed his name. There's no doubt about that. I don't dispute that," she says. "But he [Stoker]didn't know very much about the real Dracula. For example, he didn't know - there's no evidence that he knew - that the real Dracula impaled his enemies on wooden stakes."

Stoker already had a name for his fictional count, but changed it after he came across the reference to "Dracula" and the explanation that the name meant "devil" in Romanian. "So he borrowed it, but he didn't know very much about the guy who really owned the name."

The coincidental appearance of wooden stakes in both the fictional and historical stories has made the erroneous connection even stronger, says Miller. "What some people have done, assuming that he knew this [about Vlad the Impaler], is said, 'Oh, that's why vampires are destroyed by driving wooden stakes through their hearts.' " But vampires have been a part of Eastern European folklore for centuries, and so has the notion that they are killed by driving a stake through their heart, Miller explains. "That's an example of how things mushroom out of proportion."

The truth can be found in Stoker's own notes, which he kept while writing Dracula. They were discovered in 1974 in a library in Philadelphia, and contain no mention of Vlad the Impaler, says Miller."After the notes were found, of course, the horse was gone out of the stable - the damage had been done."

Many of the misconceptions about Dracula arise from the hundreds of movies and documentaries that have been made about the story. One very common mistake is the assertion that Count Dracula can not go out in daylight. "In the novel he's out in the sunlight at least nine times," says Miller, adding that many such simple errors arise from people not reading the book.

Miller, who teaches English and lists Dracula as her favorite novel, says the subject deserves to be treated seriously, both academically and as a pop culture topic. "Some people just don't take it seriously enough. I feel that the book and its author deserve the same kind of scrutiny and the same kind of scholarly status that any other great 19th century novel deserves," she says.

"Because of the movies, it's been trivialized. And not only movies - for some people it's just a joke. If people did that with other great literary works, scholars would be screaming. So I felt that maybe I should scream."

Dracula, rather than being the type of pulp horror that is popular today, is a classic novel of Gothic horror, says Miller, whose office door sports a sticker reading "My Canada includes Transylvania." "It's the universal struggle between good and evil, and of course good wins, and it's cloaked in Christian discourse, so it's a re-affirmation of Christianity over the powers of darkness," she says.

The novel also reveals much about the 1890-97 time period in which it was written and published, specifically British anxieties about sexuality and foreigners, says Miller. "It's a window into late-Victorian England."

University students generally love to be assigned the novel, but are often dismayed that it is not gruesome - modern horror stories leave little to the imagination, she says. "Some people are disappointed that it's not page after page after page of bloodsucking and bloodletting. They're expecting a Stephen King novel. But it's not like that. That's not to say it's not horrifying."

The novel's popularity - it is required reading in dozens of university courses across North America - can also be ascribed to the simple fact that it is a great story by a great writer, says Miller. "It's a good narrative. It's a good guys versus bad guys story, and some people like that formula, and are reassured when the good guys win."

On a scholarly and literary level, "the evil that Dracula represents is a socially constructed evil," she adds.

Miller's specialty, though making her the subject of endless puns by headline writers, has its advantages. She recently gave lectures at universities in Poland and Transylvania, and her new book has already been mentioned on BBC Radio and in the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. She has appeared on several TV documentaries about Dracula and/or Transylvania, the most recent being one produced for the Discovery Channel. And her web site - dubbed "Dracula's homepage" - has been visited 270,000 times.

"I find it satisfying as a scholar, because I feel I'm making a major contribution to the field," she says of her new book. And one more thing. "Count Dracula never wears a cape. That's in the movies. That's Bela Lugosi."