Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author and theatre manager, best known as the author of the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula, which introduced the vampire Count Dracula and became one of the most enduring and widely adapted works in Western horror fiction.[1]
Early life
Stoker was born at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the north side of Dublin, the third of seven children of civil servant Abraham Stoker and Charlotte Thornley, a writer and charity worker from a Protestant family in western Ireland.[2] He was a sickly child, reportedly unable to stand unaided until the age of seven, and spent much of this period bedridden, being told folk tales and horror stories by his mother.[3] He recovered fully and became an outstanding athlete at Trinity College, where he studied mathematics, graduating with honours in 1867 and later earning an MA in 1875.[4]
Civil service and theatre criticism
Stoker worked for ten years in the Irish Civil Service, while writing as an unpaid drama critic for the Dublin Evening Mail — then partly owned by fellow Irish horror writer Sheridan Le Fanu — from 1871 to 1876.[5] In December 1876, a favourable review he wrote of actor Henry Irving's performance in Hamlet led to a meeting between the two men, which developed into a close, lifelong friendship.[6]
Henry Irving and the Lyceum Theatre
In 1878, Stoker became personal assistant to Henry Irving and business manager of London's Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned — a position he held for 27 years, until Irving's death in 1905.[1] Through this role, Stoker moved in London's literary circles, becoming acquainted with figures including Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, and corresponding with American poet Walt Whitman.[3][7]
Personal life
Stoker married Florence Balcombe, a noted Irish beauty who had previously been courted by Oscar Wilde, in 1878; the couple had one son, Noel, born the following year.[7] Some biographers have suggested Stoker's intense male friendships, including with Irving, and the homoerotic undertones of Dracula, point to a repressed or unacknowledged homosexuality, with some connecting the novel's composition — begun in 1890 but written in a period some describe as self-loathing shortly after Oscar Wilde's 1895 conviction — to this reading of his personal life; this remains a matter of scholarly interpretation rather than established biographical fact.[6]
Dracula
Stoker began researching and taking notes for Dracula in 1890, keeping a journal from 1871 that he continued for a decade, with an entry near its end hinting at the character who would become Count Dracula.[8] He did not encounter the historical figure Vlad the Impaler, Prince of Wallachia, until 1881, well into his research, and drew the fictional Count's ancestry and character from him without depicting Vlad directly.[8][7] Stoker is also believed to have drawn on Henry Irving's own commanding, theatrical presence as a real-life inspiration for the character.[2] Published in 1897 as an epistolary novel told through letters and journal entries, Dracula received mixed early reviews — some critics warned of its "unnecessary number of hideous incidents" and advised keeping it from children and "nervous adults" — but it went on to permanently reshape Western popular culture's image of the vampire.[9]
Other works
Stoker's first published book was a legal handbook, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (1879), followed by an early romantic thriller, The Snake's Pass.[1] Following Irving's death in 1905, Stoker joined the literary staff of the London Telegraph and continued writing fiction, including the horror novels The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911).[9]
Death
Stoker died on 20 April 1912 at 26 St George's Square, London.[8]
Legacy
Dracula has never been out of print and has inspired countless stage and screen adaptations, cementing Stoker's Count as one of Western fiction's most enduring villains. In 2013, Stoker's great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker, working from a rediscovered personal journal Stoker kept from 1871, published The Lost Journal to mark the centenary of his death. Dacre Stoker later co-authored Dracula: The Un-Dead (2009) with Ian Holt, an officially endorsed sequel to the original novel.[10]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Bram Stoker."Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Bram Stoker."Vampedia.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Bram Stoker: Biography."Sky HISTORY.
- ↑ "Bram Stoker."EBSCO Research Starters.
- ↑ "Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker."Classic Ghost Stories Podcast.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Bram Stoker (1847-1912)."OutStories Bristol.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Dracula: Bram Stoker Biography & Background on Dracula."SparkNotes.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "On This Day: Bram Stoker, the Irish author of 'Dracula,' dies in 1912."IrishCentral.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Bram Stoker Biography."Notable Biographies.
- ↑ "Bram Stoker."Biography.com.