His father, Abraham Stoker, was a civil servant; his mother, Charlotte Thornley Stoker, was a social activist with a particular concern for impoverished women. Though the precise nature of his illness remains unknown, the young Stoker was so chronically weak that, until the age of seven, he rarely left his bed. He kept himself occupied with books from his father's well-stocked library and was frequently entertained by the grisly folktales involving spirits and plagues that his mother liked to tell. As a boy, Stoker wrote many poems and ghost stories and promised his family that one day he would enjoy literary fame.
In 1864 Stoker began his studies at Dublin's Trinity College, where he was named president of the Philosophical Society and the Historical Society, both of them prestigious undergraduate organizations. Now large and robust, he participated in a variety of sports and began to evince an increased enthusiasm for both the theater and Walt Whitman's verse. As a young man, Stoker sent Whitman a series of lengthy, unrestrained fan letters and continued to plan for a literary career of his own. Still, acceding to his father's wishes, Stoker, upon graduation, entered the Irish civil service and was soon promoted to inspector of petty sessions—a position that, perhaps not surprisingly, failed to develop into a consuming passion.
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