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• Born: 8 November 1847
• Birthplace: Clontarf, Ireland
• Died: 20 April 1912
• Best Known As: The guy who wrote Dracula

Abraham (Bram) Stoker wrote the classic vampire novel Dracula. Raised in a Dublin suburb and educated at Trinity College, Stoker began his career as a civil servant. On the side he wrote theater reviews and short stories, and in 1878 he left Dublin for London, to take a position managing the Lyceum Theatre for actor Sir Henry Irving. During his long career at the Lyceum he also wrote fantastic stories and novels, cementing his fame with 1897's Dracula. His other books include The Snake's Pass (1890), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1904) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911).

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) is best known as the author of "Dracula" (1897), one of the most famous horror novels of all time.

Abraham Stoker was born in Clontarf, Ireland in 1847. He was a sickly child, bedridden for much of his boyhood. As a student at Trinity College, however, he excelled in athletics as well as academics, and graduated with honors in mathematics in 1870. He worked for ten years in the Irish Civil Service, and during this time contributed drama criticism to the Dublin Mail. His glowing reviews of Henry Irving's performances encouraged the actor to seek him out. The two became friends, and in 1879 Stoker became Irving's manager. He also performed managerial, secretarial, and even directorial duties at London's Lyceum Theatre. Despite an active personal and professional life, he began writing and publishing novels, beginning with The Snake's Pass in 1890. Dracula appeared in 1897. Following Irving's death in 1905, Stoker was associated with the literary staff of the London Telegraph and wrote several more works of fiction, including the horror novels The Lady of the Shroud (1909) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). He died in 1912.

Although most of Stoker's novels were favorably reviewed when they appeared, they are dated by their stereotyped characters and romanticized Gothic plots, and are rarely read today. Even the earliest reviews frequently decry the stiff characterization and tendency to melodrama that flaw Stoker's writing. Critics have universally praised, however, his beautifully precise place descriptions. Stoker's short stories, while sharing the faults of his novels, have fared better with modern readers. Anthologists frequently include Stoker's stories in collections of horror fiction. "Dracula's Guest," originally intended as a prefatory chapter to Dracula, is one of the best known.

Dracula is generally regarded as the culmination of the Gothic vampire story, preceded earlier in the nineteenth century by Dr. William Polidori's "The Vampyre," Thomas Prest's Varney the Vampyre, J. S. Le Fanu's Carmilla, and Guy de Maupassant's "Le Horla." A large part of the novel's initial success was due, however, not to its Gothicism but to the fact, noted by Daniel Farson, that "to the Victorian reader it must have seemed daringly modern." An early reviewer of Dracula in the Spectator commented that "the up-to-dateness of the book - the phonograph diaries, typewriters, and so on - hardly fits in with the mediaeval methods which ultimately secure the victory for Count Dracula's foes." Stoker utilized the epistolary style of narrative that was characteristic of Samuel Richardson and Tobias Smollett in the eighteenth century, and that Wilkie Collins further refined in the nineteenth. The narrative, comprising journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, a ship's log, and phonograph recordings, allowed Stoker to contrast his characters' actions with their own explications of their acts.

Some early critics noted the "unnecessary number of hideous incidents" which could "shock and disgust" readers of Dracula. One critic even advised keeping the novel away from children and nervous adults. Initially, Dracula was interpreted as a straightforward horror novel. Dorothy Scarborough indicated the direction of future criticism in 1916 when she wrote that "Bram Stoker furnished us with several interesting specimens of supernatural life always tangled with other uncanny motives." In 1931 Ernest Jones, in his On the Nightmare, drew attention to the theory that these "other uncanny motives" involve repressed sexuality. Critics have since tended to view Dracula from a Freudian psychosexual standpoint; however, the novel has also been interpreted from folkloric, political, feminist, medical, and religious points of view.

Today the name of Dracula is familiar to many people who may be wholly unaware of Stoker's identity, though the popularly held image of the vampire bears little resemblance to the demonic being that Stoker depicted. Adaptations of Dracula in plays and films have taken enormous liberties with Stoker's characterization. A resurgence of interest in traditional folklore has revealed that Stoker himself did not conform to established vampire legend. Yet Dracula has had tremendous impact on readers since its publication. Whether Stoker evoked a universal fear, or as some modern critics would have it, gave form to a universal fantasy, he created a powerful and lasting image that has become a part of popular culture.

Further Reading

Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 5: Late Victorian and Edwardian Writers, 1890-1914, Gale, 1991, pp. 310-16.

Farson, Daniel, The Man Who Wrote Dracula: A Biography of Bram Stoker, Joseph, 1975, St. Martin's, 1976.

Glut, Donald F., The Dracula Book, Scarecrow Press, 1975.

Leatherdale, Clive, Dracula: The Novel and the Legend, Aquarian Press, 1985.

Ludlam, Harry, A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker, St. Martin's, 1976.

McNally, Raymond T., editor, A Clutch of Vampires, New York Graphic Society, 1974.

McNally, Raymond T., and Radu Florescu, In Search of Dracula:A True History of Dracula and Vampire Legends, Warner, 1976.

For more information on Bram Stoker, visit Britannica.com.

Stoker, Bram [Abraham] (1847-1912), novelist. Born in Dublin, he studied at TCD after a sickly childhood, and followed his father into the Civil Service. From 1871 he contributed drama reviews and other pieces to the Dublin Evening Mail. In 1878 he moved to London to become the actor Henry Irving's manager, an arrangement which lasted until Irving's death in 1905. A first novel, The Snake's Pass (1891), is set in Co. Mayo. Dracula (1897), his novel of vampirism, was influenced by Sheridan Le Fanu. It was followed by a steady stream of other publications: Miss Betty (1898), The Mystery of the Sea (1902), and The Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903). The Man (1905) and Lady Athlyne (1908) are, like Miss Betty, romantic novels. In The Lair of the White Worm (1911) a legendary monster returns to prey on 19th-cent. Staffordshire.

(Abraham Stoker), 1847–1912, English novelist, b. Ireland. He is best remembered as the author of Dracula (1897), a horror story recounting the adventures of the vampire Count Dracula. The fame of the leading character was furthered by popular stage and film adaptations of the novel. Stoker's other novels include The Jewel of Seven Stars (1904). For 27 years he was manager of the actor Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre.

Bibliography

See biography by B. Belford (1996); R. T. McNally and R. Florescu, In Search of Dracula (1972); R. Dalby, Bram Stoker: A Bibliography of First Editions (1983).

(1847-1912)

Writer of books on occult themes and creator of the deathless vampire Dracula. He was born on November 8, 1847, in Dublin, Ireland. Stoker was named Abraham after his father but later preferred the short form "Bram."

He was a sickly child for some years although quite athletic as a young man. Perhaps his brooding childhood first engendered those imaginative horrors that found expression in his great vampire story and other weird thrillers. His mother had told him tales of the banshee, the Irish fairy whose terrifying wails announce death in the family, and also of the great cholera plague that had claimed thousands of victims in an Ireland ravaged by starvation and foreign occupation.

Stoker studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and became a member of the college's Philosophical Society, later being elected president. His first essay delivered to the society was titled "Sensationalism in Fiction and Society." He was auditor for the Historical Society and also developed a great interest in theater. At age 19 he was electrified by a performance of the great actor Henry Irving, whose company he later joined as a manager.

Stoker graduated with honors in science in 1870 and spent ten uneventful years as a civil servant at Dublin Castle. His first book was the prosaic but quite useful The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions (1879). In 1878 he married Florence Balcombe, a beautiful woman who had been on friendly terms with Oscar Wilde.

After a period as part-time drama critic, newspaper editor, and barrister at law, he became acting manager for Henry Irving, accompanying him on his British and American tours. Stoker was a hardworking manager and faithful friend to Irving for 27 years until Irving's death in 1905.

His masterpiece, Dracula, was written at odd moments and weekends during a busy career. It owed the name of its basic character to chance conversation with the intrepid Hungarian scholar-explorer Arminius Vambéry (1832-1913), who visited Dublin on a lecture tour.

It seems that Vambéry told Stoker about Romanian legends of the bloodthirsty tyrant Prince Vlad Tepes (known as Dracula, or "son of Dracul"). Stoker also researched in libraries in Whit-by and London and perfected his knowledge of the background of the Transylvanian countryside, in which he set his fictional count. Some of the weird atmosphere of his story probably derived from the vampire story Carmilla, written by another Dubliner, Sheridan Le Fanu, and first published in 1871.

In addition to his immortal Dracula, Stoker published other novels and stories: The Snake's Pass (1890), The Watter's Mou' (1895), The Shoulder of Shasta (1895), Miss Betty (1898), The Mystery of the Sea (1902), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1904), The Man (1905), The Gates of Life (1908), Lady Athlyne (1908), Snowbound (1908), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). His volume of short stories Dracula's Guest was published posthumously in 1937; the title story was originally a chapter in the manuscript of Dracula, deleted to shorten the work. He died April 20, 1912. His greatest work, at least to himself, was his biography of his mentor, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (2 vols., 1906). He also wrote an interesting volume called Famous Impostors (1910).

Bram Stoker's memory and his association with Gothic literature is kept alive by various societies, notably the Bram Stoker Society (c/o David Lass, Hon. Secretary, Regent House, Trinity College, Dublin, 2, Ireland); the Dracula Society (36 Elliston House, 100 Wellington St., London, SE10 QQF, England); The Count Dracula Fan Club (29 Washington Sq. W., New York, NY 10011); and the Transylvanian Society of Dracula (P.O. Box 91611, Santa Barbara, CA 93190-1611).

Sources:

Dalby, Richard. Bram Stoker: A Bibliography of First Editions. London, 1983.

Farson, Daniel. The Man Who Wrote Dracula: A Biography of Bram Stoker. New York: St. Martin's, 1976.

Ludlam, Harry. A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker. London: Fireside Press, 1962.

Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1994.

Roth, Phyllis A. Bram Stoker. Boston: Twayne, 1982.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London: Constable, 1897.

——. Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1914.

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