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| Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker :
Biography
Bram Stoker is best known as the
author of Dracula (1897), one of the most famous horror novels of all
time.
Early life
Abraham Stoker was born in Clontarf,
Ireland, on November 8, 1847. He was a sickly child, bedridden for much of his
boyhood until about the age of seven. As a youth, Stoker was intrigued by the
stories told him by his mother, Charlotte. Especially influential to the mind
of young Stoker were the stories she related about the cholera epidemic of 1832
which claimed thousands of lives. These cruel and vivid tales began to shape
the young Stoker's imagination.
Stoker grew up strong, and as a
student at Trinity College, in
Dublin, Ireland, he excelled in athletics as well as academics, and graduated
with honors in mathematics in 1870.
He worked for ten years in the Irish Civil Service, and during this time
contributed theater criticism to the Dublin Mail. His glowing reviews of
Henry Irving's performances encouraged the actor to seek him out. The two
became friends, and in 1879 Stoker became Irving's manager. He also performed
managerial, secretarial, and even directorial duties at London, England's
Lyceum Theatre. In 1878 he married Florence Balcombe and the couple moved to
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in London.
Early writings
Despite Stoker's active personal and
professional life, he began writing and publishing novels, beginning with The
Snake's Pass in 1890. The success of this book prompted Stoker to continue writing.
Although most of Stoker's novels were
favorably reviewed when they appeared, they are dated by their stereotyped
characters (characters based on broad generalizations) and romanticized plots,
and are rarely read today. Even the earliest reviews frequently point out the
stiff characterization and tendency to be overly dramatic that flaw Stoker's
writing. Critics have universally praised, however, his beautifully precise
place descriptions. Stoker's short stories, while sharing the faults of his novels,
have fared better with modern readers. Anthologists (a person who puts together
a collection of literary pieces) frequently include Stoker's stories in
collections of horror fiction. "Dracula's Guest,"
originally intended as an introductory chapter to Dracula, is one of the
best known. After a pair of books— The Watter's Mou' and Antheneum —were
well received, he began research into the world of vampires.
Dracula
Stoker's Dracula appeared in
1897. The story is centered around the diaries and journal entries of Jonathan
Harke when he meets the mysterious Count Dracula. The
Transylvanian follows Harke to England, where the count continues his
blood-thirsty endeavors. Laced with themes of lust and desire, Stoker spins a
bloodcurdling tale that still haunts readers more than one hundred years after
it was first published.
Dracula is generally regarded as the
culmination of the Gothic (style of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries) vampire story, preceded
earlier in the nineteenth century by William Polidori's The Vampyre, Thomas
Prest's Varney the Vampyre, J. S. Le Fanu's Carmilla,
and Guy de Maupassant's
Le Horla. An early reviewer of Dracula in the Spectator commented
that "the up-to-dateness of the book—the phonograph diaries, typewriters,
and so on—hardly fits in with the medieval methods which ultimately secure the
victory for Count Dracula's foes." The narrative, comprising journal
entries, letters, newspaper clippings, a ship's log, and phonograph recordings,
allowed Stoker to contrast his character's actions with their own analysis of
their acts.
Some early critics of Stoker's novel
noted the "unnecessary number of hideous incidents" which could
"shock and disgust" readers of Dracula. One critic even
advised keeping the novel away from children and nervous adults. Initially, Dracula
was interpreted as a straightforward horror novel. Dorothy
Scarborough indicated the direction of future criticism in 1916 when she
wrote that "Bram Stoker furnished us with several interesting specimens of
supernatural life always tangled with other uncanny motives." In 1931
Ernest Jones, in his On the Nightmare, drew attention to the theory that
these motives involve repressed sexual desires. Critics have since tended to
view Dracula from a Freudian psychosexual standpoint, which deals with
the sexual desires of the unconscious mind. However, the novel has also been
interpreted from folkloric, political, medical, and religious points of view.
The Legacy Of Dracula
Today the name of Dracula is familiar
to many people who may be wholly unaware of Stoker's identity, though the
popularly held image of the vampire bears little resemblance to the demonic
being that Stoker depicted. Adaptations of Dracula in plays and films
have taken enormous creative freedoms with Stoker's characterization. A
resurgence of interest in traditional folklore has revealed
that Stoker himself did not use established vampire legends. Yet Dracula has
had tremendous impact on readers since its publication. Whether Stoker created
a universal fear, or as some modern critics would have it, gave form to a
universal fantasy, he created a powerful and lasting image that has become a
part of popular culture.
Following the death of Stoker's close
friend Irving, in 1905, he was associated with the literary staff of the London
Telegraph and wrote several more works of fiction, including the horror
novels The Lady of the Shroud (1909) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911).
He died on April 20, 1912, in London, England.
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