Book Description

The Snake's Pass is an 1890 novel by Bram Stoker. It centers on the legend of Saint Patrick defeating the King of the Snakes in Ireland, as well as on the troubled romance between the main character and a local peasant girl. The Snake's Pass was Stoker's second imperial fiction novel, and was first published in the United Kingdom in 1890. The novel is a precursor to Stoker's Dracula. A year before the release of The Snake's Pass, Stoker published chapter three, "The Gombeen Man", as a short story in The People. It was later incorporated into the novel. On 8 November 1847, Abraham (Bram) Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland. His father worked as a civil servant and his mother was a charity worker and writer. During Stoker's childhood he spent many days in bed due to different illnesses. While he was bedridden, his mother told him horror stories which may have influenced his novels and writings. In 1864 Stoker began school at the Trinity College, Dublin. During his time at the university, he worked part-time as a freelance journalist and drama critic. In 1878, Stoker met Henry Irving and they became friends. Two years later Stoker accepted a job to work as Irving's personal assistant in London. Stoker's first book, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, was written in Dublin and published in 1879. His first fictional book, Under the Sunset, was published in 1881. He wrote many other novels and short stories; however, he is best known for Dracula. Stoker died of exhaustion at the age of 64 after writing a total of 18 books. Stoker is best known for using a Gothic style of writing throughout his novels. The Snake's Pass is classified as a romantic thriller in a barren western Ireland setting. Stoker also creates the theme of suspense through his character narrations. Severn draws out his narration of the plot to his advantage to create the suspense. While The Snake's Pass is a fictional book, Stoker uses nonfictional themes and ideas, such as the explanation of the bog, to create a more realistic novel. In Nicholas Daly's book Modernism, Romance and the Fin de Siècle: Popular Fiction and British Culture he discusses the theme of imperial space for the 19th-century adventure novel. He poses the question of "what would happen if the imperial novel characters never left across many miles of space but rather a less exotic space?". This can be seen in The Snake's Pass as a more domesticated, colonial setting. Daly believes that the novel fails as a fantasy of imperial control. The author also refers to the production and reception of the theme of romance in Stoker's novel. Because Stoker wrote the novel while he was based in London, the question of spatial metaphor is raised. Daly believes that Stoker "fails to capture the nature of the dimensions in which the novel originated and functioned". (wikipedia.org)