Dracula

We read Bram Stoker's Dracula for book club.  It was a fun read.  I pitched it but really had no idea what the story was beyond the fact that Dracula was a vampire.  It's considered a classic and seemed worthy of reading since it's the literary origin of an icon.

It was published in 1897, after the Industrial Revolution and about 30 years after Darwin's Origin of the Species.

In short, a group of Westerners (British, Dutch, American) defeat Dracula through use of Christianity, modern science and technology, and folklore.

Dracula is essentially pro-Western, pre-WWI propaganda. Its message is that "evil Romanians will corrupt our pure, virtuous women through sexual deviancy and our women in turn will corrupt our men thereby destroying Western civilization, therefore Romanians must be stopped; P.S. Romanians are Satan himself".