Book Description

Previously unpublished research sheds new light on how Bram Stoker researched and wrote Dracula and the people who inspired his characters. Bram Stoker: Author of Dracula is an affectionate and revealing biography of the man who created the vampire novel that would define the genre and lead to a new age in Gothic horror literature. Based on decades of painstaking research in libraries, museums, and university archives and privileged access to private collections on both sides of the Atlantic, the private letters of Bram and the reminiscences of those who knew him not only shed new light on Stoker's ancestry, his life, loves and friendships they also reveal more about the places and people who inspired him and how he researched and wrote his books. Bram wrote numerous articles, short stories and poetry for newspapers and magazines, he had a total of eleven novels and two collections of short stories published in his lifetime, but he would only become known for one of them – Dracula. Tragically, he did not live long enough to see it as a huge success. In his heyday as Acting Manager for Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in the West End of London, Bram was a well-known figure in a golden age of British theater. He was a big-framed, ebullient, genial, gentleman, with red hair and beard, who never lost his soft Irish brogue, was blessed with wit, and a host of entertaining stories fit for every occasion. Described as having the paw of Hercules and the smile of Machiavelli, above all he knew what it meant to be a loyal friend.