LIFE:

His father works as state employee in the office of the Dublin Castle's secretariat. He degrees in mathematics at Trinity College in Dublin, but after having left the school he develops a large interest for literature and theatre. He works as drama critic for the "Mail", acquiring the reputation of harsh critic and at the same time he works for the public administration too. He meets the actor Henry Irving (famous at that time for the interpretation of Frankenstein) and he follows him to London as a friend and councilman. He becomes organiser of the Lyceum Theatre in Dublin. He begins to write some grand-guignol tales and plays (that have poor success)and a collection of children tales (Under the Sunset, 1881).
In 1897 he publishes Dracula that has a really great success and gives an economic wellbeing. After the death of his friend Irving he publishes other novels and the work in two volumes Personal reminiscence of Henry Irving, 1906.

SUGGESTED WORKS:

Dracula, 1897
Is recognised as one of the most important gothic novels never written, and still now its reputation is alive all over the world. Stoker was struck by reading Carmilla by Le Fanu and decided to write his novel trying to inspire himself to this author.
Stoker begins to write Dracula after having abundantly documented with scrupulous "mathematical" meticulousness on everything that could help him to construct his novel consulting books and maps of the British Museum, making searches on the traditions of the vampires' folklore and on a personage of evil reputation who lived approximately 4 centuries before - Vlad Tepes the impaler - and setting the story in one of the wilder and disowned places of Europe: Transylvania, nest of every superstition.
A particular characteristic of this novel is that was written as a diary mad by many people, where everyone tells his own story, in a "thick cross-references game , of mirrors that don't leave, at least in the intentions, no dark corner" - Leonard Wolf, The annotated Dracula - enriching it, with letters, notes, press cuttings, in a really good editing that probably gave to this novel the great success it gained.

OTHER WORKS:

The other works of Stoker are darkened by the reputation of Dracula. Deserve mention The Mystery of the Sea, 1902 and Personal reminiscence of Henry Irving, 1906, dedicated to his friend.
Also in the tales collection Dracula's Guest and other Weird Stories, published posthumous in 1914, Stoker has proved to be a competent plot manipulator and creator of macabre atmosphere.

BACK TO LITERATURE PAGE