Biography of Bram Stoker (1847-1912)

Writer of one of the world's most famous horror novels, Abraham Stoker was born to the loosely defined socio-cultural group known as the Anglo-Irish. A Protestant Dubliner, he was the son of a civil servant, and he was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. As a child, Abraham Stoker was a sickly child often on the point of death‹by his own account, he never stood upright without aid until he was seven years old. But he grew into a physically robust youth, excelling in athletics during his college years. At Trinity College, he studied mathematics and became president of the Philosophical Society and the Historical Society.

In the years between 1870 and 1877, he was a civil servant at Dublin Castle. He maintained ties to Trinity College, returning there frequently to speak on a wide range of topics for the Philosophical Society. He was deeply interested in the Romantic poets, and during these years he established a correspondence with Walt Whitman. The two men exchanged letters until Whitman's death. Stoker also became an enthusiastic theatergoer and an ardent admirer and friend of Henry Irving, writing dramatic criticism and glowing reviews of Irving's work for the local papers. Many have argued that Henry Irving was an important model for the character of Count Dracula, and that the novel was a kind of unconscious revenge against the man to whom Stoker gave so much. During these years, Stoker's position in the Historical Society at Trinity put him in contact with Dublin's elite. He became a regular guest of Sir William and Lady Wilde, the parents of Oscar Wilde, and was drawn into Lady Wilde's literary and artistic circle of friends. He competed with Oscar Wilde for the hand of Florence Balcombe, a beautiful young woman who was the daughter of a lieutenant-colonel. Florence chose Bram, and the two were married in 1878, the same year he left for London and a new job as the business manager of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre. That same year, he wrote The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, drawn from his experience as a civil servant. Stoker continued to work faithfully and tirelessly for Henry Irving until the actor's death in 1906.

The many years with Henry Irving were full of hard work and sacrifice, as Stoker frequently put his work before his family. His only child, Noel, was born in 1879. Noel later felt that Stoker's work for Irving wore out the devoted younger man. There was constant touring and promotional work to be done, throughout the British Isles and as far away as North America. It was during these years that Stoker wrote his greatest novel, Dracula (1897). In 1905, Irving collapsed and died while on tour in Sheffield. Stoker was so profoundly affected by the death of his friend and hero that he suffered a stroke. After Irving's death, Stoker continued to write fiction and do newspaper work until his own death in 1912.

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Bram Stoker wrote numerous novels, short stories, essays, and lectures, but Dracula is by far his most famous work. His other works have not aged well, but the story of Count Dracula continues to sell steadily even to this day. Stoker coined the term "undead," and his interpretation of vampire folklore has powerfully shaped depictions of the legendary monsters ever since.

About Dracula:

The first edition of Dracula was published in June 1897. As late as May of that year, Stoker was still using his original working title for the novel, The Un-Dead. "Undead," a word now commonly ...

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About Dracula:

The first edition of Dracula was published in June 1897. As late as May of that year, Stoker was still using his original working title for the novel, The Un-Dead. "Undead," a word now commonly used in horror novels and movies, was a term invented by Stoker. Dracula was his most famous novel, instantly a bestseller and perhaps the most famous horror novel ever. It has been made and re-made in film adaptations, been reprinted numerous times, and has continued to sell copies for a hundred years.

Although earlier novels about vampires had been published in England, Stoker's depiction of the vampire has had perhaps the strongest hold on the popular imagination. Stories of vampires or vampire-like creatures exist in all cultures: from China to India to the Incan Empire, variations of the vampire have populated diverse peoples' nightmares and folklore. Stoker researched Eastern European legends, which offer widely varied tales about supernatural monsters. In Eastern European lore, there is not one kind of vampire but many, and "vampire" is not so distinct a category from "demon" or even "witch" as it has become in modern horror movies. Stoker chose freely from among the legends about various Eastern European demons, some of them bloodsucking, and came up with a suitable interpretation of the vampire for his novel.

He also studied Eastern European history. In the prince of Wallachia, Vlad Tepes, or Dracula ("Son of Dracul"), Bram Stoker found inspiration for his tale of an undead nobleman. Vlad Tepes ("Vlad the Impaler") was a fifteenth Christian nobleman who fought against the Turks. He was a defender of his country and his religion, winning the Pope's praise for his campaigns against the Moslems. The times were full of fear for Christendom‹Constantinople, the Rome of the East, had just fallen to the ever-expanding Turks. Vlad was also legendary for his cruelty, to Moslem and Christian enemies alike. He was famous for his love of impaling his victims, a method of execution in which it often took days for the condemned to die. After one battle, thousands of Turkish soldiers were impaled at Vlad's command. After Vlad's death, legends about him continued to multiply. Stoker drew on Vlad's legend for the creation of the vampire Dracula.

Stoker was deeply concerned with sexual morality. Although his novel is full of racy subtext‹possibly far more subtext than the author intended‹his own views regarding sex and morality were in many ways quite conservative. He favored censoring novels for their sexual content‹he considered racy literature dangerous for the ways that it nurtured man's darker sexual tendencies. Although Dracula has many scenes that seem to revel in sexual language and sensual description, these pleasures are sublimated to a Victorian and Christian sense of morality. Sexual energy, in Stoker's view, has great potential for evil, but part of the novel's trick is that Stoker is allowed to have his cake and eat it, too. In writing a novel that implicitly conflates sin with sexuality in a moralizing way, Stoker is also given free reign to write incredibly lurid and sensual scenes. The themes of Christian redemption and the triumph of purity carry the day, but the sexually loaded scenes‹that of the three female vampires closing in seductively on a powerless but desiring Jonathan Harker, for example‹tend to linger longest in the reader's mind.

Short Summary:

Dracula is an epistolary novel, meaning that is composed from letters, journal and diary entries, telegrams, and newspaper clippings. Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray (later Mina Harker), and Dr. Seward write the largest contributions to the novel‹although the writings of Lucy Westenra and Abraham Van Helsing constitute some key parts of the book. The novel is meant to have a slightly journalistic feel, as it is a harrowing account supposedly written by the people who witnessed the book's events.

A young Englishman named Jonathan Harker travels through Transylvania on a business trip. He is there to aid Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman, in buying an English estate. His journey into the remote Eastern European landscape is fearsome, although initially he is charmed by the Count's generosity and intelligence. Gradually, he comes to realize that he is a prisoner in Dracula's castle, and that the Count is a demonic being who plans to prey on the teeming masses of London. Dracula leaves him to die at the hands of three female vampires, but Jonathan attempts a desperate escape. . .

Meanwhile, in England, Jonathan's fiancée Mina visits her best friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy has recently been proposed to by three men‹Arthur Holmwood, Dr. Seward, and Quincey Morris. She chooses Arthur to be her happy fiancé. Mina and Lucy vacation together at Whitby, a quaint seaside town. While they are there, a Russian vessel is shipwrecked. A large dog leaps from the wreck and runs away. All of its crew are missing save one dead captain. The ship was carrying fifty boxes of earth from Dracula's castle. Despite the wreck, the boxes are delivered as ordered. Lucy begins to exhibit strange behavior: she sleepwalks often, and she seems to be growing paler and weaker. Eerie things happen‹one night, Mina finds her unconscious in the cemetery, as a figure with glowing eyes bends over her. The figure disappears as Mina comes closer, but night after night strange events continue and Lucy grows thinner and paler with each passing day.

Word comes from Budapest that Jonathan has been found, sick with brain fever. He can remember nothing of his travels in Transylvania. Mina goes to nurse him back to health and to help him make the trip back to England. When she arrives, they marry immediately. He gives her his diary but is afraid to read it; she seals the diary and promises that she will never read it unless it is for his sake.

Back in England, Lucy has returned to her home in London. Arthur, fearful for her health, asks Dr. Seward to try to figure out what is wrong with her. Seward is baffled by her illness, and calls in the aid of his old mentor, the brilliant Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Van Helsing seems to know from the beginning what he might be up against. He tries to use various charms, as well as constant blood transfusions, to keep Lucy alive. Again and again, his attempts are thwarted by a mixture of Dracula's cunning and bad luck. Lucy's mother is killed by a heart attack during one of Dracula's more dramatic plots to get to Lucy, and Lucy dies a few days later. Arthur's father dies at about this time. Van Helsing takes possession of Lucy's diary and correspondence, which lead him to make contact with Mina Harker.

Meanwhile, the Harkers have returned to England. Peter Hawkins, Jonathan's boss, dies suddenly‹leaving the Harkers a considerable fortune. One day while they are in London, Jonathan actually sees the Count‹who has been restored to his youth by his feeding‹and although Jonathan cannot really remember things clearly, he has a nervous attack and falls unconscious. When he comes to, he cannot remember what upset him. Disturbed by this behavior, Mina decides to read the journal. The contents of the journal baffle her, and she wonders if her husband was already in the throes of brain fever. When Van Helsing comes to visit her to ask questions about Lucy, Mina is so impressed by the man that she gives him Jonathan's journal. It provides the missing link for Van Helsing, who now knows how the vampire came to England.

Mysterious attacks against children have begun in the area where Lucy was buried. Van Helsing shows Seward, Quincey, and Arthur that the cause is Lucy, who is now one of the undead. Arthur is the one who gives his fiancée peace by staking her through the heart. The four men pledge to destroy Dracula next.

Mina and Jonathan join with the men, and using the asylum of Dr. Seward as their headquarters, they plan to destroy Dracula for good. The fifty boxes, now scattered in and around London, are the key. The boxes are full of earth made sacred by Dracula's family, and he cannot survive unless he sleeps in them for at least part of the day. The men begin to hunt down the boxes' whereabouts. But Renfield, one of Dr. Seward's patients, works as Dracula's henchman, and with his aid the vampire is able to feed on Mina in secret. By the time the men learn what is going on, they are too late: they burst into the room one night to find Jonathan unconscious and Mina being forced to drink blood from Dracula's chest. Now, after enough time has passed she will become one of the undead‹unless they can destroy Dracula first.

They set to work, sterilizing (with holy wafer) all but one of the boxes in one day. Dracula, in the last box, flees back to Transylvania to rest and regroup for another attack. The band of friends tracks him down, splitting up so that Van Helsing and Mina will go to purge the castle while the four young men track the last box. Van Helsing and Mina succeed, killing the three female vampires and using holy wafer to render the castle uninhabitable for the undead. They then regroup with the others, and all together they surround the gypsies who are transporting Dracula in his coffin. During the struggle against the gypsies, Quincey receives a mortal wound. Jonathan and Quincey deliver the killing blows to Dracula just as the sun is setting.

Bram Stoker was the author of Dracula, his work was key in the development of the myth of the Vampire. He was born in Dublin, Ireland and at the age of 16 attented Trinity College at Dublin University. He graduated with honours in science and eventually earned his M.A.

In 1873 he was offered the editorship of a new newspaper called the Irish Echo, part time and without pay. The paper failed and in 1874 he resigned. His first bit of horror writing The Chain Of Destiny, appeared as a serial in the Shamrock in 1873. His frist book, a collection of childrens stories called Under The Sunset was published in 1882. In 1890 Stoker began work on his most famous novel, Dracula.

Stoker's decision to write Dracula seems to have been occasioned by a nightmare, a vampire rising from his tomb. He had read Carmilla several years ago. He added his own research and modeled his main character after a 15th century Prince.

Published in 1897, there was little to suggest that Stoker considered Dracula more than a good horror story. He received mixed reviews. The year after Dracula was published, Stoker's career took a downward turn. Stoker continued to write, Miss Beauty (1898), The Mystery of the Sea (1902), The Jewel of the Sever Stars (1903), The Man (1905) and the most successful, Lady of the Shroud (1909). Possibly the most important of his post-Dracula work, a collection of short stories called Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914), was published after his death.

Although Stoker did borrow the characteristics of Vlad Dracula, he added many features. Hollywood also had it's own interpritation and moved away from Dracula - the man to Dracula - the myth. Shape shifting, turning into a bat or mist is all myth, Dracula never had that power, at least as a mortal. And while 100 years have passed since the first publication, interest in Dracula - the man is increasing.

Bram Stoker's Dracula sits at number 2 of the all time best sellers list, number one belongs to the Bible.