Rather than fully fledged vampires, the Dracula of the series seems to be more reliant on an army of vampiric minions, similar to Renfield.

In the book, he's an assistant to a real estate agent that gets touched by the evil of Dracula and goes insane in the process, leaving him with a constant lust for the blood of small living creatures. The only American in the original, was a Texas man called Quincey Morris. Major differences and liberties taken from the original book:

Seward, and Renfield all have a role in Penny Dreadful.

The characters Dracula, Professor Van Helsing, Mina Harker (née Murray), Dr.

'Children of the night, what music they make' is a reference to the original Dracula (1930) starring Béla Lugosi, as the Count says 'what sweet music they make' in the book.

Seward uses a phonograph, which was a novelty when the original book was published. The same goes for about three quarters of the book.

Dracula acts more as a permeating force throughout the series, than actually being a physical threat.

Similarities to the original Dracula novel: The Shelleys and the real Lord Byron knew each other well, and it was while they were all on vacation together in Switzerland, that Mary Shelley first conceived the Frankenstein story. He was institutionalized due to his florid delusions, which included the beliefs that he was really Shakespeare or Lord Byron in disguise that he had multiple wives and that he was a celebrated boxer. Clare had a tragic life although his mostly rural-themed poems were generally well-received, their sales were not sufficient to earn him a living to support his wife and children, especially after he started suffering from mental illnesses and alcoholism.

John Clare was a real English poet during the Romantic movement (the same era as more famous writers such as Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Shelley's wife and 'Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus' author Mary). Caliban, the name first given to him by the actor Vincent Brand, is a character from Shakespeare's play The Tempest who (like the monster) is described both as monstrous ('A freckled whelp hag-born-not honour'd with / A human shape') and sensitive, with a legitimate grievance against his master Prospero. Frankenstein's monster sometimes uses the names 'Caliban' or 'John Clare'.

Proteus penny dreadful