Anglo-Irish author Bram Stoker (1847- 1912) was born in Dublin, Ireland, where he spent a decade as a civil servant before moving to London in 1878. The move was prompted by Stoker’s becoming the business manager of the era’s best known actor, Henry Irving (1838-1905), who had just taken over London’s Lyceum Theater. For the next 27 years, until Irving’s death, Stoker helped run the theater, managing and promoting Irving’s career, writing letters in his name, and accompanying the actor on tours to various parts of the world (including the United States, which Stoker avidly admired). Stoker began a supplementary career as a novelist when he published The Snake’s Pass in 1890; his later novels include The Mystery of the Sea (1902), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). Like Dracula, these works combine elements of Gothic horror and often grotesque fantasy. None, however, has enjoyed Dracula’s lasting success. Written in a period of national anxiety in Britain, the novel reflects a society that fears its own vitality may somehow be draining away.
Certainty and doubt in late Victorian Britain.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 4,900 words (approx. 16 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Dracula Access Pass.
