Bram Stoker

**Abraham "Bram" Stoker** (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic horror novel *Dracula*. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned.

Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland. His parents were Abraham Stoker (1799–1876) from Dublin and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley (1818–1901), who was raised in County Sligo. Stoker was the third of seven children, the eldest of whom was Sir Thornley Stoker, 1st Bt. Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf and attended the parish church with their children, who were baptised there, and Abraham was a senior civil servant.

Stoker was bedridden with an unknown illness until he started school at the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years." He was educated in a private school run by the Rev. William Woods.

Stoker visited the English coastal town of Whitby in 1890, and that visit was said to be part of the inspiration for *Dracula*. He began writing novels while working as manager for Irving and secretary and director of London's Lyceum Theatre, beginning with *The Snake's Pass* in 1890 and *Dracula* in 1897. During this period, Stoker was part of the literary staff of *The Daily Telegraph* in London, and he wrote other fiction, including the horror novels *The Lady of the Shroud* (1909) and *The Lair of the White Worm* (1911). He published his *Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving* in 1906, after Irving's death, which proved successful, and managed productions at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

Before writing *Dracula*, Stoker met Ármin Vámbéry, a Hungarian-Jewish writer and traveller (born in Szent-György, Kingdom of Hungary now Svätý Jur, Slovakia). Dracula likely emerged from Vámbéry's dark stories of the Carpathian mountains. Stoker then spent several years researching Central and East European folklore and mythological stories of vampires.

The 1972 book *In Search of Dracula* by Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally claimed that the Count in Stoker's novel was based on Vlad III Dracula. At most however, Stoker borrowed only the name and "scraps of miscellaneous information" about Romanian history, according to one expert, Elizabeth Miller; further, there are no comments about Vlad III in the author's working notes.

*Dracula* is an epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic but completely fictional diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to the story, a skill which Stoker had developed as a newspaper writer. At the time of its publication, *Dracula* was considered a "straightforward horror novel" based on imaginary creations of supernatural life. "It gave form to a universal fantasy ... and became a part of popular culture."

Stoker was a deeply private man, but his almost sexless marriage, intense adoration of Walt Whitman, Henry Irving and Hall Caine, and shared interests with Oscar Wilde, as well as the homoerotic aspects of *Dracula* have led to scholarly speculation that he was a repressed homosexual who used his fiction as an outlet for his sexual frustrations. In 1912, he demanded imprisonment of all homosexual authors in Britain: it has been suggested that this was due to self-loathing and to disguise his own vulnerability. Possibly fearful, and inspired by the monstrous image and threat of otherness that the press coverage of his friend Oscar's trials generated, Stoker began writing *Dracula* only weeks after Wilde's conviction.

The original 541-page typescript of *Dracula* was believed to have been lost until it was found in a barn in northwestern Pennsylvania in the early 1980s. It consisted of typed sheets with many emendations and handwritten on the title page was "THE UN-DEAD." The author's name was shown at the bottom as Bram Stoker. Author Robert Latham remarked: "the most famous horror novel ever published, its title changed at the last minute." The typescript was purchased by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

***Cadabra Releases:***

Dracula

Dracula (2022)

***Bibliography:***

### Novels

* *The Primrose Path* (1875)
* *The Snake's Pass* (1890)
* *The Watter's Mou'* (1895)
* *The Shoulder of Shasta* (1895)
* *Dracula* (1897)
* *Miss Betty* (1898)
* *The Mystery of the Sea* (1902)
* *The Jewel of Seven Stars* (1903, revised 1912)
* *The Man* (1905); issued also as *The Gates of Life*
* *Lady Athlyne* (1908)
* *The Lady of the Shroud* (1909)
* *The Lair of the White Worm* (1911, posthumously abridged 1925); issued also as *The Garden of Evil*
* *Seven Golden Buttons* (written in 1891, much material reused in *Miss Betty*; posthumously published in 2015)

### Short story collections

* *Under the Sunset* (1881) – eight fairy tales for children
* *Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party* (1908)
* *Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories* (1914)

### Non-fiction

* *The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland* (1879)
* *A Glimpse of America* (1886)
* *Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving* (1906)
* *Famous Impostors* (1910)
* *Great Ghost Stories* (1998) (Compiled by Peter Glassman, Illustrated by Barry Moser)
* *Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition* (2008) Bram Stoker Annotated and Transcribed by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller, Foreword by Michael Barsanti. Jefferson, NC & London: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-3410-7