The Life and Times of Bram Stoker

Mary Shelley stitched together Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus and Robert Louis Stevenson developed the idea of a split personality in the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Another genius created his own piece of influential history.

Career

Abraham "Bram" Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 in County Dublin.

He was bedridden for the first seven years of his life, in a time when it was still common practice to perform blood-letting: draining 'bad blood' from a patient to cure disease.

Interestingly, the Irish Gaelic phrase for 'bad' or 'tainted blood' is droch-fola.

Abraham senior was a member of the British civil administration in the Chief Secretary's Office of Dublin Castle and his mother, Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley, entertained Bram with ghost stories and tales of Irish folklore.

He often recounted those days, crediting her for feeding his imagination.

"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."

At sixteen, he was admitted to Dublin's Trinity College and excelled at sport, winning various cups and awards.

During this time, Bram served as president of the Philosophical Society and helped recruit one the college's finest members - a certain Oscar Wilde.

By 1877, Bram had been promoted to the office of Inspector of Petty Sessions.  In this posting, he completed his first published work, Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, a reference book for civil servants working within the Irish legal system.

Bram was also a frequent contributor to The Daily Telegraph, focusing on the public activities of theatrical personalities.  The most notable figure was Victorian Shakespearean actor, Sir Henry Irving.

After his flattering review of Hamlet, Irving gave him the opportunity to become his Acting Manager in 1878, which he duly accepted; delaying his marriage to Florence Balcombe.

For the next twenty-seven years, Bram was employed as Irving's jack of all trades.

While managing London's Lyceum Theatre and Irving's career, he managed to write several novels on a part-time basis, including Dracula.

Vampire

The word 'vampyre' can be traced back to 1732, when word first entered the English language.

Given the attention of vampires reported by the British press, this coincided (and/or led to) a rising interest in gothic literature.

Although poets Robert Southey and Lord Byron got their teeth into subject matter, Byron's personal physician John William Polidori wrote the first piece of vampire fiction, The Vampyre (1819), modelling his vampire Lord Ruthven on Byron himself.

Dracula

Stoker took name from fifteenth-century Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler.

Contrary to popular belief, Stoker knew very little about the real Dracula.

He was already working on the novel and had even selected moniker for his Count - Wampyr.  After borrowing an obscure history book from the public library while on holiday in Whitby in 1890, he noticed a footnote suggesting Dracula came from a Romanian word for 'devil'.

This fitted perfectly with Stoker's conception for the embodiment of evil, so he appropriated name (as a vampire).

Despite already having works such as The Primrose Path (1875), The Snake's Pass (1890) and The Shoulder of Shasta (1895) under his belt, magnum opus was published on 26 May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company for six shillings.

No corrected editions followed, although a Constable paperback abridged by Stoker was issued in 1901 for sixpence.

As late as 20 May, the Memorandum of Agreement Stoker signed with Constable to produce the book mentions novel's working title 'The Un-Dead'.

Shortly before its publication, Bram orchestrated a public reading at the Lyceum Theatre, using actors from the theatre company in various roles.  It is believed that mindset was not only to secure copyright, but also as the first step towards producing a stage adaptation of his novel, placing Irving in the title role.

However, any chance of a stage production in his lifetime were dashed when novel (described as being 'vulgar' and 'disgusting'), received scathing reviews.

Finally, there is no doubt that Stoker was influenced by Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, which was originally published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871-1872).

Death

After Irving died in 1905, Bram suffered a number of strokes.

While on the road to recovery, he penned Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving.

Novel didn't bring him notoriety as an author, and less than a year later, it was reprinted in a cheaper edition.  He continued to write, but subsequent novels brought precious little success.

Exhaustion took Bram Stoker's life on 20 April 1912.  The sinking of the Titanic upstaged news of his passing a few days earlier.

Dracula's Guest

Florence Stoker collected together stories that were subsequently published as Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914), including what she claims in her preface as an 'unpublished episode' from Dracula.

While broadly accepted to be the original first chapter, Stoker's own notes for the novel, discovered by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu in Philadelphia in the 1970's; says it was actually the second.

What is certain that Constable deemed work superfluous, so deleted it prior to publication.

Going back to Le Fanu's work, Countess Dolingen is basically a derivative of Countess Mircalla (an anagram of Carmilla).

Legacy

Over time, novel's popularity soared and literary masterpiece has never been out of print.

Story has been adapted into television dramas, films, subject to endless parody and inspired multiple video games.

Bram Stoker died 111 years ago, but through Dracula - achieved immortality.