Bram Stoker (1847-1912)

1847: b. 8 Nov., 15 The Crescent (Marino), Fairview [Clontarf], Co. Dublin; bapt. Abraham, 2nd son and 3rd child of Abraham Stoker of Derry, petty clerk of Chief Secretary’s Office, with his wife Charlotte Matilde Blake [née] Thornley, who witnessed the cholera epidemic of 1832 in Sligo and was a social reformer in Dublin, concerned with education for the deaf and dumb and other causes; sickly as a child and was unable to walk until the age of seven, though without any positive diagnosis; ed. TCD; studied science, maths, oratory, history, and composition, and was taught by Edmund Dowden; grad. with “Double First” (Hons.); elected by turns President of the “Phil” [DU Philosophical Society], where he speaks inaugurally on ‘Sensationalism in Fiction and Society’ (1867), and Auditor of the Hist. (1872), lecturing on ‘The Necessity for Political Honesty’; becomes a regular visitor to the Wilde’s home at Merrion Sq. (Dublin); describes himself contemporaneously as a ‘philosophical Home Ruler’; responds to Prof. Dowden’s advocacy of Walt Whitman, and writes two lengthy letters of adulation to the American poet praising particularly the idea of manly friendship, the first (1871) remaining unposted for four years; brothers George, Dick and William all trained as doctors; enters civil service, first in Dublin Castle and then throughout the country as Inspector of Petty Sessions;

 

1871: contrib. theatre reviews to Dublin Evening Mail (ed. Henry Maunsell), 1871-75, writing enthusiastic drama criticism; completes extra-mural MA in mathematics (TCD); friendly with John Dillon, and other nationalists; his mother and father departed for retirement to Switzerland; occupies lodgings at 73 Harcourt St., 30 Kildare St., 47 Kildare St., 73 Harcourt St. (again), 119 Baggot St., and 16 Harcourt St.; his first story, “The Crystal Cup”, placed with London Society; receives repeated rejection slips for “Jack Hommon’s Vote”; contribs. serial stories to The Shamrock incl. “The Primrose Path” (Sept. 1872), “Buried Treasure” (March 1875), “The Chain of Destiny” (May 1875), a tale of cholera; also “The Dualitists, or The Death Doom of the Double Born” (Theatre Annual, 1887); contribs. unsigned commentaries to The Warder (prop. J. S. Le Fanu at that date); ed. The Irish Echo, a Dublin evening paper based on London morning papers; death of father in Switzerland, Oct. 1876; organises reception for Henry Irving [bapt. John Henry Bobdribb] in Dublin, 1876, including a “College Night” at the theatre and a popular procession through the city in which the actor’s carriage was drawn by the students; meets Irving, 3 Dec. 1876, and forms a close bond; organises further Dublin visits for Irving; writes ‘London in view!’ in diary, 22 Nov. 1877;

 

1878: issues Duties of the Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (1878); moves to London as Irving’s mgr. (‘Irving’s treasure’ to some but is ‘literary henchman’, acc. Shaw); opens The Lyceum in collaboration with H. J. Loveday (its former stage-manager), thus forming ‘the Unholy Trinity’ that would dominate London stage, 1878-1905; meets Sir Richard Francis Burton on the boat train to Dublin 1879; courts Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe, the friend of Oscar Wilde (who called her ‘Florrie’ and requested back from her the gold cross he had given); m. at St. Anne’s, Dawson St., Dublin, 4 Dec. 1878, she being cited on the certificate as a minor; settles at 7, Southampton St., Covent Gdn., London (unfurnished rooms, £100 p.a.); Florence refuses sex after the birth of the first and only child, [Irving] Noel Thornley Stoker, in 1879 (according to Enid Stoker, gm. of biographer Daniel Farson); family moves to 27, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 1881, Stoker cycling from there to work at the Lyceum Theatre off the Strand; rescues a suicide from drowning in the river, 13 Sept. 1882, the old man later dying on the Stoker’s dining table causing Florence to hate the house; moves to 17 St. Leonard’s Terrace; issues Under the Sunset (1882), a novel, and “Lies and Lilies” (1882), a story; brings Lyceum on first tour of America, taking Boston Theatre, 1883; visits Walt Whitman at his home, 20 March 1884 (the man ‘fulfils the boy’); visits Quebec, Sept. 1884; lectures on “A Glimpse of America”, 28 Dec. 1885; sails for America to arrange further Lyceum tour with Irving’s sensational version of Faust, Autumn 1886; Florence and Noel escape from shipwreck on board steamship “Victoria” nr. Dieppe, 13 April 1887; Stoker lectures in Lincoln [Th.] at Chickering Hall, New York, 25 Nov. 1887, using Whitman’s “Memoranda During the War” as source; occurrence of ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders, Whitechapel, 1888 (once linked by Stoker to his famous novel in an introduction); visits Whitman for the last time and tries to persuade him to expurgate homosexual references in Leaves of Grasses;

 

1889: issues The Snake’s Pass, a novel set in the 19th-c. west of Ireland, and centre on hated moneylender Black Murdock, serialised in The People and other provincial papers, 1889; published as book Nov. 1890; sends a presentation copy to Gladstone; passes three weeks at Whitby, staying at 6 Royal Crescent, summer 1890; makes his first notes for Dracula and reads Wilkinson’s Account of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820) in Whitby Public Library, encountering name of ‘Dracula’ there; learns that the Dmitry ran aground there on 24 Oct. 1885 from coastal guardsman and local Gazette, 1890; writes to Michael Davitt to elicit favourable review of The Snake’s Pass in The Labour World, 1890; meets Violet Hunt and her circle near Whitby, 1890; called to the English bar, 30 April 1890, but never takes a client; promotes efforts to produce a stage-version of William O’Brien’s When We Were Boys for the London stage, 1890; contribs. to The Nineteenth Century, Fortnightly Review; and occas. to The Daily Telegraph; joint-ventures with William Heinemann to relaunch Tauchnitz series; gains Tennyson’s approval for a stage adaptation of his [Thomas à] Becket, 1891; Yeats enscribed a copy of The Countess Kathleen to him in 1892; undertakes walking tour in Scotland visiting Slains Castle, poss. inspiration for Dracula’s abode, 1893; issues “The Squaw” (1893), a story; involved with Mark Twain in Paige Compositor Manufacturing Co., an abortive type-setting scheme, soon overthrown by Mergenthaler’s Linotype; Irving knighted on Queen’s birthday list at the instance of Gladstone, 1895; Stoker’s br. Thornley Stoker (Pres. of Royal Coll. of Surgeons, Dublin), also knighted, 1895; a portrait of Florence Stoker by Walter Osborne us exhibited and admired at Royal Academic (London), Summer 1895; Stoker[s] pass two summers at Kilmarock Arms Hotel, Cruden Bay [meaning ‘blood of the Danes’], Scotland, composing Dracula, 1895-96;

 

1896: travels to USA with Irving, winter 1896; feuding between Irving and Shaw; on 20 May 189[6] signs contract with Archibald Constable (2 Whitehall Gdns. Westminster) for a novel provisionally called “The Un-dead” and inspired by ancient tales of vampirism and some contemporary reportage of 1887 but also heavily influenced by “Carmilla”, the vampire tale by J. S. Le Fanu whose example Stoker had already followed in “The Chain of Destiny” (Shamrock, 1875); a typescript of the novel published as Dracula on 26 May 1897; borrowes a substantial sum from Hall Caine; Dracula went into a 6p. Popular Edn. in 1901; dramatic copyright protected by an advertised reading at Lyceum on morning of 18 May 1897; Irving repeatedly refuses to play part of Dracula; Stokers move to 18 St Leonard’s Terrace, Chelsea, London; visits America with Irving for the second time, Oct. 1903-April 1904, and [seemingly] presents the typescript of Dracula to the unknown American who partly inspired it by providing vampire-material from The World (NY) in 1896; Lyceum scenery destroyed in storage by fire, 18 Feb. 1898; Irving falls ill with pleurisy and signs away The Lyceum to a consortium without consulting Stoker; Stoker writes a cryptic biographical notice on himself for Who’s Who (under recreations, ‘pretty much the same as those of the other children of Adam’); departs aboard SS Marquette on US tour, Oct. 1899;

 

1902: death of Charlotte Stoker, 1902 (bur. St. Michan’s, Dublin); increasing alienation from Irving following the latter’s marriage to Eliza Aria; spends summers at The Crookit Lum (cottage), Cruden Bay, 1902 and years after, writes The Mystery of the Sea there , a novel involving ghosts and cipher, 1902; issuesThe Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903), a novel with an Egyptian mummy plot, ded. to Eleanor [viz, Elinor Wyle] and Constance Hoyt, two beautiful American girls who visited London; issues The Man (1905), in which Harold An Wolf, a Cambridge grad. and Alaskan adventurer, is matched with Stephen Norman, a ‘New Woman’; Irving collapses and dies after a performance of his own adaptation of Tennyson’s Becket during his ‘farewell’ tour in Bradford, Friday 13 Oct. 1905; Stoker returns to journalism; contribs. interviews to The Daily Chronicle; issues Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, 2 vols. (1906), better received than any of his fiction though afterwards trashed by Austin Brereton in his life of Irving (1908); briefly returns to theatre management for David Bishopham’s musical performance of The Vicar of Wakefield, 1906; organises English section of Paris Theatrical Exhibition; appears as model for William II Building the Tower of London in Goldsborough Anderson’s mural in the Royal Exchange (London); club & society membership included Dramatic Debaters, Society of Authors, Shakespeare Memorial Soc., Urban Club, and New Vagabond Club (with Hall Caine); contribs. ‘Fifty Years on Stage: An Appreciation of Ellen Terry’ to The Graphic in her jubilee year, 1906; experiences declining health from 1905;

 

1907: suffers a minor stroke, being nursed by Florence; moves to 4 Durham Place (former home of Captain Bligh), 1907; joins the staff of Daily Chronicle; contribs. theatrical profiles to World (NY); participates prominently in campaign to censor ‘unclean’ books; writes “The Censorship of Fiction” for The Nineteenth Century & After, and “The Censorship of Stage Plays”, the latter warning against decentralisation of the Lord Chamberlain’s duties among to local authorities; contribs. “The Great White Fair in Dublin” and “The World’s Greatest Ship-building Yard” [Harland & Woolff, Belfast] to an ‘Irish Number’ of The World’s Work (Vol. 9, 1907); issues Famous Impostors (1910), which includes the assertion that Elizabeth I was a man in disguise; issues The Lady of the Shroud (1909), a novel ded. to Geneviève Ward; suffers second stroke and receives £100 [pension], 1910; seeks grant from Royal Literary Fund, 1911; becomes member of National Liberal Club; moves from Chelsea to 26, St. George’s Sq., Belgravia; issues The Lair of the White Worm (1911), in which the worm, Lady Arebella, is eradicated by the hero Adam Salton, with much sexual symbolism [tunnels, &c.]; defends Capt. E. J. Smith of the Titanic; d. 20 April; death cert. admitting interpretation of syphilis (disputed by Belford); cremated and bur. at East Columbarium, Golders Green, London, where his wife’s ashes were afterwards distributed; obits. appeared in London Times and Irish Times, 22 April 1912, the latter calling him ‘a typical Irishman of the best type’ and citing novels ‘of a sensational character’ without naming Dracula);

 

Posthumous: Florence Stoker sells 317 items of his literary effects at Sotheby’s, 7 July 1913; moves to 4 Kinnerton Studios (now Braddock Hse.), Knightsbridge, 1914; issues Dracula’s Guest, a chapter excluded from the 1897 novel [and still omitted], dealing with a Jonathan Harker’s encounter with a vampiric femme fatale on his way to Dracula’s castle; also incls. “The Judge’s House”, dealing with the nervous breakdown of the title-character; Mrs. Stoker donates relevant papers to Irving Collection at Stratford-upon-Avon; she strenuously contests the rights of Friedrich Wilhem Murnau’s vampire film Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), through the Society of Authors, resulting in ostensible destruction of the film, July 1925; first dramatic production of Dracula directed by Hamilton Deane, Little Theatre, 14 Feb. 1927; filmed for Universal Studios by Tod Browning with Bela Lugosi in lead (later buried in his Dracula cloak), 1931; first filmed in colour by Hammer Films with Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, 1958 - to be followed by numerous Lee sequels; skit-version filmed by Roman Polanski, as Dance of the Vampires, with Sharon Tate, in 1967; Vampires in New York, an AIDS-themed Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, with Brad Pitt, 1997; the first full biography issued by Harry Ludlam (1962), after which another by Stoker’s grand-nephew Daniel Farson (1975), alleging that his death was caused by syphilis; another issued by Barbara Belford (1996); the working papers for Dracula are held in Philadelphia; an archive of Stoker family papers was presented to TCD Library by Noel Dobbs, Aug. 1999; new biography issued Paul Murray (2004), with much new material from papers of Sir Thornley Stoker - who was the object of well-known comments by George Moore; four new Irish stamps were issued to commemorate Stoker in 2004. IF JMC DIL DIW DIB OCEL KUN SUTH FDA OCIL

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Works

Fiction
  • Under the Sunset (London: Sampson Low 1882) [stories, ostens. for children, incl. ‘The Invisible Giant’];
  • The Snake’s Pass (London: Sampson Low 1890) [err. 1891 DIL];
  • The Shoulder of Shasta (London: A. Constable 1895);
  • The Watter’s Mou (London: A Constable 1895);
  • Dracula (London [Westminster]: A. Constable 1897); Do. [1st American edn.] (NY: Doubleday and McClure 1899) [infra]; Do. [pop. edn.] (London: Constable 1901); Do. [ another edn.] (1910); Do. [another edn.] Rider Edn. 1925);
  • Miss Betty (London: C. A. Pearson 1898);
  • The Mystery of the Sea ([q. pub.] 1902);
  • The Jewel of the Seven Stars (London: Heinemann 1903) [ded. Elinor and Constance Hoyt];
  • The Man (London: Heinemann 1905);
  • Lady Athylene (London: Heinemann 1908);
  • The Lady of the Shroud (London: Heinemann 1909) [ded. Geneviève Ward];
  • Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann 1906);
  • Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party (London: Collier 1908);

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Collections
  • Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories (London: George Routledge 1914); Do. [2nd edn.] (London: Jarrolds 1966, 1974), 192pp., [ ‘an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula’, p.8]. [see contents & related editions, as infra];
  • C. Osborne, ed., The Bram Stoker Bedside Companion (London: Gollancz 1973);
  • The Bram Stoker Omnibus, intro. by Fay Weldon (London: Orion 1992), xiv, 576pp. [includes Dracula; The Lair of the White Worm, and Dracula’s Guest];
Note also Bram Stoker’s Dracula, by Saberhagen and Hart (Pan) [adaptation].

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Miscellaneous
  • College Historical Society; Address Delivered in the Dining Hall of Trinity College, at the First Meeting of the Twenty-Eighth Session on Wednesday Evening, November 13, 1872. (Dublin: James Charles & Son 1872);
  • Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann 1906);
  • Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party (London: Collier 1908);
  • Famous Imposters (London: Sidgewick & Jackson 1910); The Lair of the White Worm (London: William Rider [1911]) [see summary].

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Journal contribs.
  • ‘The Chain of Destiny’, Shamrock, 12/446-9 (1-22 March 1875), pp.498-99, 514-16, 530-33, 546-48;
  • ‘The Great White Fair in Dublin: How there has arisen on the site of the old Donnybrook Fair a great exhibition as typical of the new Ireland as the former festival was of the Ireland of the past’, in The World’s Work: An Illustrated Magazine of Efficiency and Progress, Vol. 9 (May 1907), pp.570-76;
  • ‘The World’s Greatest Shipbuilding Yard: Impressions of a visit to Messrs Harland and Wolff’s ship-building yards at Belfast’, in ibid., pp.647-590;
  • “Pat” [pseud.], ‘Pioneering on the West Coast’, ibid., pp.630-33.
  • “The American ‘Tramp’ Question and the Old English Vagrancy Laws”. North American Review, CXC: 648 (Nov. 1909), 605-614 [all cited in Morash, ‘That Other World (… &c.)’, 1998.]

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In translation
  • Seán Ó Cuirrín trans., Dracula (BAC: Oifig Diolta Foillseacháin Rialtais 1933);
  • Dracula, trans. Mary Arrigan & ed. Emmett B. Arrigan (BAC: An Gúm 1998), 88pp.
 
Critical Editions
  • Nina Auerbach & David J. Skal, eds., Bram Stoker, Dracula [1897]: authoritative text, contexts, reviews and reactions, dramatic and film variations, criticism [A Norton Critical Edition] (NY: Norton 1997), 492pp. [incls. working papers together with the deleted first chap. ‘Dracula’s Guest’; Emily Gerard’s account of Transylvania, Varney the Vampire, &c., with introd. essays by Phyllis Roth, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen Arata, Talia Schaffer; also Christopher Frayling, ‘Bram Stoker’s Working Papers for Dracula’, pp.339-50];
  • Maurice Hindle, ed., Dracula, [1897] (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1993).

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Reprint Editions
Dracula
  • Dracula (NY: [Dover] 1979); Dracula (Dingle: Brandon, rep. 1992); Do., [Penguin Pop. Classics] (Harmonsworth: Penguin 1994), 449pp.; Do. (Wordsworth Classics 1994) [num. others internationally]
  • L. Woolf, ed., The Essential Dracula (NY 1993) [incl. draft Chap. 1: ‘Dracula’s Guest’].
  • A. N. Wilson, ed., Dracula [World’s Classics] (OUP 1983);
  • Marjorie Howes, ed., Dracula [Everyman’s Library] (London: Dent 1993), xvi, 382pp.;
  • Maud Ellmann, ed., Dracula [World Classics] (Oxford: OUP 1996), 389pp.;
  • Clive Leatherdale, annot. & ed., Dracula Unearthed (Westcliff-on-Sea: Desert Island Books 1998), 512pp.;
  • David Rogers, ‘Introduction’, Dracula ( Ware: Wordsworth Editions 2000), q.pp.;
  • Dracula: The Author’s Cut [Creation classics] ([London]: Creation 2005), 263pp. [1901 edition with additional chapter, being Dracula’s Guest, publ. posthum., 1914].
Other titles
  • The Jewel of Seven Stars [1904] (OUP 1996), 204pp.;
  • [... &c.; uncompiled]

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Bibliography
  • William Hughes, Bram Stoker [Abraham Stoker], 1847-1912: A Bibliography [Victorian Fiction Research Guide] (University of Queensland 1997), iv, 73pp.
 
Irish Adaptions
  • Dracula, or How’s Your Blood Count?, by Bram Stoker, adapted by Micky O’Donoughue and Johnny Hanrahan, 8 Sept.-1 Oct. 1994, Lyric Theatre, Belfast, advertised as ‘classic family entertainment’.

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The Gutenberg Project: online editions at the Gutenberg Project incl. Dracula [text & audio]; Dracula’s Guest; The Lady of the Shroud; The Jewel of Seven Star; The Man; The Lair of the White Worm (See Gutenberg - Index, 6 June 2007 [link]; and Stoker texts [link].)

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Bibliographical details
Dracula's Guest(s)

Dracula’s Guest, and Other Weird Stories (London: George Routledge & Sons [1914]), 200pp. [contains “Dracula’s Guest”; “The Judge’s House”; “The Squaw”; “The Secret of the Growing Gold”; “A Gipsy Prophecy”; “The Coming of Abel Behenna”; “The Burial of the Rats; “A Dream of Red Hands”; “Crooken Sands”]. Note also: Dracula’s Guest [ltd. souvenir edition] (London: Prince of Wales’ Theatre 1927) , q.pp.

Dracula’s Guest and Other Stories, with an introduction by David Stuart Davies (London: Wordsworth 2006), 224pp. [13 stories incl.“Dracula’s Guest”;“The Judge’s House”; “The Burial of the Rats”; “The Secret of Growing Gold”, and “The Gypsy’s Prophecy”. Note: Harker, the narrator of the first, writes: ’On top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble - for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone - was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters: “The Dead Travel Fast’”.]

Dracula’s Guest, and Other Weird Stories [with] The Lair of the White Worm, ed., intro., and annot. by Kate Hebblethwaite [Black Classics] (London: Penguin 2006), xlvi, 408pp.

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Plot summary
Lair of the White Worm (1911): Adam Salton is contacted by his granduncle Richard Salton who seeks to purpose establish a relationship with the last member of his family. Adam , and travels to the other’s house in Mercia where he finds himself caught up in strange events involving Edgar, the heir to the Caswall estate, who has been mesmerising a local girl, while Arabella March, a lady in the vicinity, appears to aim at seducing Edgar and becoming Caswall for the furtherance of her dark intents. The destruction of the worm’s lair in its hidden cavern within the sea-cliff, along with its human priestess (Lady March), provides an the explosive climax for the novel. Mimi and her ‘stalwarth’ fiancé Adam go on honeymoon at the conclusion of the novel.

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Criticism
*incl. Irish post-colonial studies

Full-length Studies
  • Harry Ludlam, A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker (London: W. Foulsham & Co. 1962), and Do. [rep. edn. as] A Biography of Bram Stoker (London: New English Library 1977).
  • Daniel Farson, The Man Who Wrote ‘Dracula’: A Biography of Bram Stoker (London: Michael Joseph 1975), and Do., large print edn. (Anstey, Leicestershire: F. A. Thorpe 1996).
  • Phyllis A Roth, Bram Stoker (Boston: Twayne 1982), 167pp.
  • Clive Leatherdale, Dracula: The Novel and the Legend (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press 1985, 1993).
  • Clive Leatherdale, The Origins of Dracula (London: William Kimber 1987).
  • Chris Baldick, In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1987).
  • Diana Landau, ed., Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”: The Film and the Legend ( New York: Newmarket Press 1992).
  • Carol A. Senf, ed., The Critical Response to Bram Stoker (Conn: Greenwood Press 1993).
  • Barbara Belford, Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula (NY: Knopf 1996), xv, 381pp. [Bibl., pp.359-63]; reviewed by Richard Jenkyns in The New Republic (5 Aug. 1996, p.39.
  • Stephen Jones, ed., The Mammoth Book of Dracula (London: Robinson Publ. 1997), 512pp.
  • Elizabeth Russell Miller, Dracula: Sense & Nonsense, introduced by Clive Leatherdale (Westcliff-on-Sea: Desert Island Books 2000), 256pp.
  • Clive Leatherdale, Dracula: The Novel and the Legend - A Study of Bram Stoker’s Gothic Masterpiece (Wellingborough: Aquarian 1985), 192pp.; Do. [enl. edn.] (Brighton: Desert Island Books 1993, 2001), 256pp.
  • Paul Murray, From the Shadow of “Dracula”: A Life of Bram Stoker (London: Johnathan Cape 2004), 352pp., ill. [8 pp. of photos].
Articles & Introductions
  • Richard Wasson, ‘The Politics of Dracula’, in English Literature in Translation, 9 (1966), pp.24-27.
  • C. F. Bentley, ‘The Monster in the Bedroom: Sexual Symbolism in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Literature and Psychology, 22, 1 (1972), pp.27-34.
  • Richard Astle, ‘Dracula as Totemic Monster: Lacan, Freud, Oedipus and History’, in Sub-Stance, 25 (1980), pp.98-105.
  • B. Hatlen, ‘The Return Of The Repressed-Oppressed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Minnesota Review, 15 (1980), pp.80-97.
  • Carol A. Senf, ‘Dracula: Stoker’s Response to the New Woman’, in Victorian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Autumn 1982).
  • Carol A. Senf, ‘Dracula: Stoker’s Response to the New Woman’, Victorian Studies, 26 (1982), pp.33-49.
  • David Forgacs, trans., Franco Moretti, ‘Dialectics of Fear’, in Signs Taken For Wonders: Essays in Sociology of Literary Forms (London: Verso 1983, rev. edn. 1988), pp.82-108.
  • Alan P. Johnson, ‘“Dual Life”: The Status of Women in Stoker’s Dracula’, in Tennessee Studies in Literature, 17 (1984), pp.27-31.
  • Geoffrey Wall, ‘“Different from Writing”: Dracula in 1897’, in Literature and History, 10, 1 (Spring 1984), pp.15-24.
  • Christopher Craft, ‘“Kiss Me with Those Red Lips”: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Representations, Vol. 8 (Fall 1984), pp.107-33; rep. in Elaine Showalter, ed., Speaking of Gender (NY & London: Routledge 1989) [pb.], pp.216-42.
  • David Seed, ‘The Narrative Method of Dracula’, in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 40 (June 1985) pp.61-75.
  • Daniel Pick, ‘“Terrors of the night”: Dracula and “Degeneration” in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Critical Quarterly, 30 (Winter 1988) pp.72-87.
  • Marjorie Howes, ‘The Mediation of the Feminine: Bisexuality, Homoerotic Desire, and Self-Expression in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 30, 1 (Spring 1988), pp.104-19
  • Andrew Parkin, ‘Shadows of Destruction: The Big House in Contemporary Irish Fiction’ in Michael Kenneally, ed., Cultural Contexts and Literary Idioms in Contemporary Irish Literature (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), pp.306-54, espec. pp.307-308.
  • Andrew Smith, ‘Bram Stoker’s The Mystery of the Sea: Ireland and the Spanish-Cuban-American War’, in Irish Studies Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (August 1988), pp.131-38.
  • Rhys Garnett, ‘Dracula and The Beetle: Imperial and Sexual Guilt and Fear in Late Victorian Fantasy’, in Rhys Garnett & R. J. Ellis, eds., Science Fiction Roots and Branches: Contemporary Critical Approaches (NY: St Martin’s Press 1988), pp.30-54.
  • Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1988).
  • Victor Sage, Horror Fiction in the Protestant Tradition (London: Macmillan 1988).
  • Anne Cranny-Francis, ‘Sexual Politics and Political Repression in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Clive Bloom, Brian Docherty, Jane Gibb, & Keith Shand, eds., Nineteenth-Century Suspense: From Poe to Conan Doyle (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988), pp.64-79.
  • Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848-c.1918 (Cambridge UP 1989), pp.167-75.
  • Christopher Craft, ‘“Kiss Me with Those Red Lips”: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Elaine Showalter, ed., Speaking of Gender (Routledge 1989), pp.216-42 [extract].
  • Robert Tracy, ‘Loving You All Ways: Vamps, Vampires, Necrophiles, and Necrofilles in Nineteenth-Century Fiction’, in Sex and Death in Victorian Literature, ed., Regina Barreca (Bloomington: Indiana UP 1990), pp.32-59.
  • Stephen D. Arata, ‘The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization’, in Victorian Studies, 33, 4 (1990), pp.621-45.
  • Jules Zanger, ‘“A Sympathetic Vibration”: Dracula and the Jews’, in English Literature in Transition 34 (1991), pp.33-44.
  • Mark S. Paris, ‘From Clinic to Classroom while Uncovering the Evil Dead in Dracula: A Psychoanalytic Pedagogy’, in James M. Cahalan & David B. Downing, eds., Practicing Theory in Introductory College Courses (Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English 1991), pp.47-56
  • Mary Fitzgerald, ‘Mina’s Disclosure: Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Gender in Irish Writing, ed. Toni O’Brien & David Cairns (Bucks: Open UP 1991), c.p.40.
  • Matthew C. Brennan, ‘Represssion, Knowledge, and Saving Souls: The Role of the “New Woman” in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Murnau’s Nosferatu’, in Studies in the Humanities, Vol. 19, No. 1 (June 1992) [q.pp.].
  • Jennifer Wicke, ‘Vampiric Typewriting: Dracula and Its Media’, in ELH, 59 (1992), pp.467-93. [var. Vampiritic]
  • Kathleen L. Spencer, ‘Purity and Danger: Dracula, The Urban Gothic and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis’, in English Literary History, 59 (1992), pp.197-225.
  • David Glover, ‘Bram Stoker and the Crisis of the Liberal Subject’, in New Literary History, 23 (Autumn 1992) pp.983-1002.
  • Jeffrey L. Spear, ‘Gender and Sexual Dis-Ease in Dracula’, in Lloyd Davis, ed., Virginal Sexuality and Textuality in Victorian Literature (NYSU Press 1993).
  • Maurice Hindle, ed., Bram Stoker, Dracula (Penguin 1993), 520pp.
  • Talia Schaffer, ‘“A Wilde Desire Took me”: The Homoerotic History of Dracula’, in English Literary History, Vol. 61 (1994), pp.381-425.
  • Marjorie Howe, ‘Study Guide to Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, with Dracula (LA: Time Warner AudioBooks 1994).
  • Cannon Schmitt, ‘Mother Dracula: Orientalism, Degeneration, and Anglo-Irish National Subjectivity at the Fin de Siècle’, in Bucknell Review, 38, 1 (1994), pp.25-43.
  • Nicholas Daly, ‘Irish Roots: The Romance of History in Bram Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass’, in Literature and History, n.s., Vol. 4, No. 2 (Autumn 1995) [q.pp.].
  • William Hughes, ‘“For Ireland’s Good”: The Reconstruction of Rural Ireland in Bram Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass’, in Irish Studies Review (Autumn 1995), pp.17-21.
  • Chris Morash, ‘“Ever Under Some Unnatural Condition”: Bram Stoker and the Colonial Fantastic’, in Brian Cosgrove, ed., Literature and the Supernatural [Essays for the Maynooth Bicentenary] (Dublin: Columbia Press 1995), pp.95-119.
  • Lara Sagolla Croley, ‘The Rhetoric of Reform in Stoker’s Dracula: Depravity, Decline, and the Fin-de-Siècle “Residuum”’, in Criticism 37, 1 (1995), pp.85-108.
  • Alexandra Warwick, ‘Vampires and the Empire: Fears and Fictions of the 1890s’, in Sally Ledger & Scott McCracken, eds., Cultural Politics at the Fin De Siecle (Cambridge UP 1995), pp 202-20.
  • Judith Halberstam, ‘Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Victorian Studies, 36 (1993), pp.333-52, rep. in Sally Ledger and Scott McCracken, eds., Cultural Politics at the Fin De Siecle (Cambridge UP 1995), pp.248-66.
  • Tom Holland, Supping With Panthers (London: Little Brown 1996) [on Byron and Stoker].
  • David Glover, Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals: Bram Stoker and the Politics of Popular Fiction (Duke UP 1996), [bibl., pp.191-205].
  • H. L. Malchow, Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Stanford UP 1996).
  • Terry Eagleton, Leslie Shepard & Albert Power, eds., Dracula: Celebrating 100 Years (Mentor Press 1997), 129pp.
  • Terry Eagleton, ‘Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel’, in Mary Massoud, ed., Literary Relations: Ireland, Egypt and the Far East (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1996), pp.135-46.
  • Seamus Deane, ‘Land and Soil: A Territorial Rhetoric’, in History Ireland, 2, 1 (Spring 1994), pp.31-34, rep. as in ‘Landlord and Soil: Dracula’ [chap. sect. in Strange Country (OUP 1997), pp.89-94 [Dracula bibl. ftn. 99, p.213].
  • Nicholas Daly, ‘Incorporated Bodies: Dracula and the Rise of Professionalism’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer 1997), pp.181-203.
  • Peter Haining & Peter Tremayne, The Un-Dead: The Legend of Bram Stoker (London: Constable 1997), 199pp.
  • Luke Gibbons, ‘“Some Hysterical Hatred”: History, Hysteria and the Literary Revival’, in Irish University Review (Spring/Summer 1997), pp.7-23, espec. p.13-16.
  • Michael Valdez Moses, ‘Dracula, Parnell, and the Troubled Dreams of Nationhood’, in Journal X: A Journal in Culture and Criticism, Vol., 2, No. 1 (Autumn 1997), pp.66-112.
  • Phylis Roth, ‘Suddenly Sexual Women in Stoker’s Dracula’, in Literature and Psychology, Vol. 27 (1997)
  • William Hughes, ‘Introducing Patrick to his New Self: Bram Stoker and the 1907 Dublin Exhibition’, in Irish Studies Review, 19 (Summer 1997), pp.9-14.].
  • William Hughes, ‘“For the Blood is the Life”: The Construction of Purity in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Decadence & Danger: Writing History and the Fin de Siècle, ed. Tracey Hill (Sulis Press 1997), pp.128-137. Lisa Hopkins, ‘Vampires and Snakes: Monstrosity and Motherhood in Bram Stoker’, in Irish Studies Review, 19 (Summer 1997), pp.5-8.
  • Carol A. Senf, Dracula: Between Tradition and Modernism [Twayne’s Masterwork Studies No. 168] (NY: Twayne Publishers 1998).
  • Seán Lennon, Irish Gothic Writers: Bram Stoker and the Irish Supernatural Tradition (Dublin Corp. Public Libraries 1998), 36pp.
  • William Hughes & Andrew Smith, eds., Bram Stoker: History, Psychoanalysis and the Gothic (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998), 229pp. [contents].
  • Margot Gayle Backus, ‘“A Very Strange Agony”: Parables of Sexual Subject Formation in Melmoth the Wanderer, Carmilla, and Dracula’, in The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order (London: Duke UP 1999) [ Chap. 4: q.pp.].
  • Glennis Byron, ed., Dracula: Bram Stoker [New Casebooks] (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1999), ix, 225pp. [contents].
  • William Hughes, ‘Chivalry and Masculinity in Bram Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass’, in Irish Encounters: Poetry, Politics and Prose, ed. Alan Marshall & Neil Sammells (Bath: Sulis Press 1998) [Chap. 3; q.pp.].
  • Nicholas Daly, ‘The Colonial Roots of Dracula’, in Bruce Stewart, ed., That Other World: The Supernatural and Fantastic in Irish Literature (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1999), pp.40-51.
  • Colin Graham, ‘A Late Politics of Irish Gothic: Bram Stoker’s The Lady of the Shroud (1999)’, in Bruce Stewart, ed., That Other World: The Supernatural and Fantastic in Irish Literature (Colin Smythe 1999), pp.30-39.
  • Bruce Stewart, ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Possessed by the Spirit of the Nation?’, in Stewart, ed., That Other World: The Supernatural and Fantastic in Irish Literature (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1999), pp.52-83.
  • ‘R. J. Cougherty, Jr., ‘Voiceless Outsiders: Count Dracula as Bram Stoker’, in New Hibernian Review, 4, 1 (Spring 2000), pp.139-51.
  • Bob Curran, ‘Was Dracula an Irishman?’, in History Ireland, 8, 2 (Summer 2000), pp.12-15.
  • Luke Gibbons, ‘The Mirror & The Vamp: Reflections on the Act Of Union’, in Bruce Stewart, ed., Hearts and Minds: Irish Culture and Society Under the Act of Union (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 2001), pp.21-39.
  • Noelle McCarthy, ‘Review: Going Beyond the Colonial’, in The Irish Review, 27 (2001 ), q.pp.
  • N. Cornwell, ‘A Singular Invasion: Revisiting the Postcolonialism of Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, in Andrew Smith & William Hughes, eds., Empire and Gothic (London: Palgrave 2002) [q.pp.]
  • John Paul Riquelme, ed., Dracula: Complete Authoritative Text with biographical, historical, and cultural contexts, critical history, and essays from contemporary critical perspectives [Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism] (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002), xv, 622pp. [contents].
  • Joseph Valente, Dracula’s Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness, and the Question of Blood (Illinois UP 2002), 192pp., 1 phot.
  • R. J. Clougherty, Jr., ‘Voiceless Outsiders: Count Dracula as Bram Stoker’, in New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, 4, 1 (Spring, 2000), pp.138-51;
  • William Hughes, Beyond Dracula : Bram Stoker's Fiction and Its Cultural Context (Basingstoke: Macmillan 2000);
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘Undead in the Nineties: Bram Stoker and Dracula’, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), pp.379-98.
  • William Hughes, Beyond Dracula: Bram Stoker’s Fiction and Its Contexts (London: Palgrave 2003), 232pp.
  • Raphael Ingelbien, ‘Gothic Genealogies: Dracula, Bowen’s Court, and Anglo-Irish Psychology’, in ELH, 70 (2003), pp.1089-05.
  • Richard Dalby & William Hughes, Bram Stoker: A Bibliography [Desert Island Dracula Library Ser.] (Westcliff-on-Sea: Desert Island 2004)l 184pp., ill.
  • Patrick R. O’Malley, ‘The Blood of the Saints: Vampirism from Polidori to Stoker’, in Catholicism, Sexual Deviance, and Victorian Gothic Culture (Cambridge UP 2006), Chap. 4. [q.pp.].
  • William Hughes, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (London: Continuum 2009), 176pp. [contents]
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Gothic, ‘Vampire’ & Gender studies
  • John A. Lester, Journey Through Despair 1880-1914: Transformations in British and Literary Culture ( Princeton UP 1968).
  • John Atkins, Sex in Literature: The Erotic Impulse in Literature ( London: Calder and Boyars, 1970) .
  • Elaine Showalter, ed, Speaking of Gender ( London: Routledge 1989) [incls. Christopher Craft, et al.].
  • Victor Sage, ed. The Gothick Novel ( London: Macmillan 1990) .
  • Radu Florescu & Raymond T. McNally, In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires [rev. edn.] (NY: Houghton Miffllin 1994).
  • Alan Dundes, The Vampire: A Casebook ( University of Wisconsin Press 1998).
  • Kurt Treptow, Vlad III “Dracula”: The Life and Times of the Historical Dracula [Centre for Romanian Studies 2000).
  • William Greenslade, Degeneration, Culture, and the Novel, 1880-1940 (Cambridge UP 1994).
  • Montague Summers, The Vampire in Lore and Legend (Dover Publ. 2001) [reiss. of The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, London: K. Paul Trench, Trubner 1928)].
  • Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire ( Abingdon: Routledge, 2006).
  • Jerrold E. Hogle, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction ( Cambridge UP 2006).
  • Elaine Showalter, ed, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle (Reading: Virago Press 2009)

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Irish Gothic & Post-Colonial Theory
  • Julian Moynahan, ‘The Politics of Anglo-Irish Gothic’, in Heinz Kosok, ed., Studies in Anglo-Irish Literature (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann 1982), pp.43-53.
  • W. J. McCormack, ‘Irish Gothic and After’, in Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature (Derry: Field Day Derry 1991), Vol. 2, pp.831-54.
  • Colin Graham, ‘Liminal Spaces: Post-Colonial Theories and Irish Culture’, in The Irish Review, 16 (1994), pp.19-43.
See also Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (NY: Routledge 1990); Patrick Brantliger, Rule of Darkness (Cornell UP 1998); Karl Beckson, London in 1890s: A Cultural History (NY: W. W. Norton 1992).
See also The Bram Stoker Society Journal. A bibliography of Gothic fiction is maintained by Gary W. Crawford at Thesicklytaper.com > Stoker [online].
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Dissertations (Selected): Salli J. Kline, ‘The Degeneration of Women: Bram Stoker’s Dracula as allegorical criticism of the Fin de Siècle ; mit einer zusammenfassung auf deutsch; avec un résumé en français [Thesis] (Rheinbach-Merzbach: CMZ-Verlag 1992), vii, 315pp. [Bibl., pp.291-309]; Erik Le Roy Coursey, ‘The “New Woman” and the Politics of Gender in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ [MA Thesis] (San Francisco State University 1993), v, 79pp.; Charles W. Wilkinson, ‘The Unification of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and its Original First Chapter, “Walpurgis night”’ (East Carolina University 1994) [M.A. Thesis 1994; bibl., pp.[54]-55]; Laura Leigh Shue, ‘Reconstruction and representation of Gender Roles in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ (Central Missouri State University 1994), 88pp. [M.A. Thesis 1994]; Jimmie Earl Cain, ‘Travelogues of Empire: Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Lady of the Shroud (Georgia State U. 1996) [Doct. Diss.].

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Bibliography, Richard Dalby, Bram Stoker: A Bibliography of First Editions (London: Dracula Press 1983); Richard Dalby & William Hughes, eds., Bram Stoker: A Bibliography (Westcliff-on-Sea: Desert Island Books 2004). See also Desertislandbooks [online].

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Bibliographical details
William Hughes & Andrew Smith, eds., Bram Stoker: History, Psychoanalysis and the Gothic History (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998), 229pp., CONTENTS: Preface; Acknowledgements; Notes on the Contributors; Smith & Hughes, Introduction: ‘Bram Stoker, the Gothic and the Development of Cultural Studies’; Alison Milbank, ‘“Powers Old and New”: Stoker’s Alliances with Anglo-Irish Gothic’ [pp.12-28]; C. C. Simmons, ‘Fables of Continuity: Bram Stoker and Medievalism’; M. Kilgour, ‘Vampiric Arts: Stoker's Defense of Poetry’; Robert Mighall, ‘Sex, History and the Vampire’; M. Mulvey-Roberts, ‘Dracula and the Doctors: Bad Blood, Menstrual Taboo and the New Woman’; Robert Edwards, ‘The Alien and the Familiar in The Jewel of Seven Stars and Dracula’; Victor Sage, ‘Exchanging Fantasies: Sex and the Serbian Crisis in The Lady of the Shroud’; Lisa Hopkins, ‘Crowning the King, Mourning his Mother: The Jewel of Seven Stars and The Lady of the Shroud’; Joseph S. Bierman, ‘A Crucial Stage in the Writing of Dracula’; David Punter, ‘Echoes in the Animal House: The Lair of the White Worm’; D. Seed, Eruptions of the Primitive into the Present’: The Jewel of Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm’; Jerrold E. Hogle, ‘Stoker's Counterfeit Gothic: Dracula and Theatricality at the Dawn of Simulation’; Index.

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Glennis Byron, ed., Dracula: Bram Stoker [New Casebooks] (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1999), ix, 225pp. CONTENTS. Acknowledgements General Editors’ Preface. Byron, Introduction; D. Punter, Dracula and Taboo; Phyllis A. Roth, Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Franco Moretti, Dracula and Capitalism; E. Bronfen, Hysteric and Obsessional Discourse: Responding to Death in Dracula; R. A. Pope, Writing and Biting in Dracula; Christopher Craft, ‘Kiss Me with Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Stephen D. Arata, The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization; N[ina] Auerbach, Dracula: A Vampire of Our Own; Judith Halberstam, Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s Dracula; David Glover, Travels in Romania: Myths of Origins, Myths of Blood; Further Reading; Notes on Contributors; Index.

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John-Paul Riquelme, ed., Dracula: Complete Authoritative Text with biographical, historical, and cultural contexts, critical history, and essays from contemporary critical perspectives [Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism] (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002), xv, 622pp. CONTENTS. Pt. 1 - THE COMPLETE TEXT IN CULTURAL CONTEXT: Biographical and Historical Contexts; The Complete Text (1897); Cultural Documents. Pt. 2 - A CASE STUDY IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM: A Critical History of Dracula; Sos Eltis, Gender Criticism and Dracula; D. Foster, Psychoanalytic Criticism and Dracula; Gregory Castle, The New Historicism and Dracula; J-P. Riquelme, Deconstruction and Dracula; Jennifer Wicke, Combining Critical Perspectives on Dracula; Glossary of Critical and Theoretical Terms; About the Contributors; Index.

William Hughes, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (London: Continuum 2009), 176pp. CHAPS.: Psychoanalysis and Psychobiography: The Troubled Unconsciousness of Dracula; Medicine, Mind and Body: The Physiological Study of Dracula; Invasion and Empire: the Racial and Ccolonial Politics of Dracula; Landlords and disputed Territories: Dracula and Irish Studies; Assertive Women and Gay Men: Gender Studies and Dracula.

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Commentary
See separate file [infra].

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Quotations
See separate file [infra].

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References

Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904); gives ‘The Gombeen Man’, excerpted from The Snake’s Pass.

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Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919); ’a tale … about the strange phenomenon of a moving bog in Mayo, with hidden treasure and prophetic dreams, attempted murder, love-sentiments, and no sectarian bias; chars., Andy Sullivan the carman, and a priest, Father Pether’. Bibl, incl. Under the Sunset (1882); The Shoulder of Shasta (1895); The Watter’s Mou (1895); Dracula (1897), translated into Irish by Sean Ó Cuirrin (Oifig Diolta Foillseacháin Rialtais, 1933), and dramatised by H. Dean and J. J. Balderston (Samuel French [1933]); Miss Betty (1898); Lady Athlyne (1908); Snowbound, the Record of a Theatrical Touring Party (1908); The Lair of the White Worm [1911]; Dracula’s Guest, and Other Weird Stories (1914).

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John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Harlow: Longmans 1988); lists Dracula (London: Constable 1897), which Stoker claimed came from a nightmare though the more plausible source is Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872); paraphrase only. Main Entry, b. Dublin, son of minor civil servant, childhood illness; TCD 1864-68; pres. Phil.; and athlete; Inspector of Petty Sessions of Ireland, 1877-78; his first horror story, ‘The Chain of Destiny’ appeared in Shamrock 1875; affiliated to Whitman vogue; f. of Henry Irving; m. and resigned civil service, 1878; bus, mgr for Irving’s London Lyceum; served Irving 27 years; reminiscences, 1906; Under the Sunset (1881), ‘fairy tales’; Dracula dedicated to Hall Caine; cultivated Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde, whose former intended Francis Balcombe he married; first novel, The Snake’s Pass (1890), adventure, mystery and lost treasure in the west of Ireland; Dracula (1897)six eds. in first year; Lyceum burns down, also 1897; romantic Miss Betty (1898); The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), Egyptian reincarnation; The Lady of the Shroud (1909), vampire; The Lair of the White Worm (1911), allegorical and supernatural. His most anthologised story is “The Squaw” [1893], in which an Indian spirit pursues a man to his eventual death in a Nuremberg torture chamber. BL 12.

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Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979); his mother, an influence, was a woman of great energy, breathless disposition, and reckless housekeeping; his father was a civil servant [var. solicitor: OCIL]; served as Irving’s indefatigable secretary and manager at the London Lyceum Theatre; married Oscar Wilde’s sweet-heart Florence Balcombe, who became frigid after childbirth; womaniser, died of syphilis. Non-fiction works incl. Famous Imposters (1910), propounding the theory that Queen Elizabeth was a man in disguise. Justly forgotten novel, The Snake’s Pass (1891) about Ireland.

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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; selects Dracula pp.889-98; W J McCormack, ed. ‘Irish Gothic and After, 1820-1945’, pp.842-46,’ Stoker rarely refers in his fiction to Ireland or its surviving folk traditions. True, his first novel, The Snake’s Pass (1891), is set in Co. Mayo, abounds in sentimental violent incident, and even summons up legends of the French revolutionary invasion; true also that Dracula was also eventually translated into Irish in 1933, perhaps to mark the accession to power of Eamon de Valera. Essentially Stoker aligns himself with the London exiles [..] as against the home-based revivalists, and the gross primitivism of his best-known fiction indicates a compensatory mechanism at work in this dichotomy of the metropolitan and the provincial, [831; also, 837, 838, 841, 842-46, 852];, 955; [Bram Stoker (sic err.) translated into Irish, 948, see infra], BIOG, In relation to his Irish origins one should note that The Snake’s Pass (1891) is ostensibly set in rural Ireland, and that Dracula was translated into Irish by Seán Ó Cuirrín (Oifig Diolta Foillseacháin Rialtais 1933); his br. Sir Thornley Stoker was sometime president of the Royal Coll. of Surgeons [and occurs as a shadowy character associated with a house full of antiques in George Moore’s Hail & Farewell; see FDA2 note at 948 only (Bram Stoker biog.)]. Criticism as supra. See also remark of W J McCormack: ‘Dracula was also eventually translated into Irish in 1933, perhaps to mark the accession to power of Eamon de Valera.’ Further: Writing in 1938 about the threat posed by Anglo-American popular culture to Irish identity, Michael Tierney could state that, ‘the difficulty in which we find ourselves is only made more apparent by the belief that the Gaelic cause is advanced when H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, and the latest American song-numbers are translated into the Irish language’ (Tierney, ‘Politics and Culture, Daniel O’Connell and the Gaelic Past’, in Studies, Vol. 27 (1938), pp.358-59) [955]

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Brandon Press Catalogue (1990) lists Dracula [1897]; The Snake’s Pass [1890]; Dracula’s Guest [1914]; and The Lair of the Worm [in which the new Independent Woman is not just a vamp but a vampire, see Brandon Catl. 1994/5]. The publisher’s blurb describes The Snake Pass as his first novel and only Irish one, a tale revolving round a villainous ‘gombeen-man’, in his own way as evil as Count Dracula [which] suggests that the novel may be significant as a reflection on the Irish politico-economic situation of the day.

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Some websites
The Bram Stoker Centre (Bray)
Joseph Valente, Dracula’s Crypt Bram Stoker, Irishness, and the Question of Blood (Illinois UP 2002)
Elizabeth Miller’s Dracula webpage

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Notes

William Carleton: Carleton includes a reference to vampirism in The Black Prophet (1847) - as recounted by Pat Sheeran: ‘In the opening scene of the book Donnel’s daughter is shown sinking her teeth into her stepmother, yet another baleful figure, and the narrative likens the action to “[…] the fierce play of some beautiful vampire that was ravening for the blood of its awakened victim”’. (The Black Prophet, London 1899, p.7; see Sheeran, “The Novels of Liam O’Flaherty: A Study in Romantic Realism” [Ph.D. Diss.], UCG 1972, p.188.)

W. B. Yeats: ‘Yeats knew Stoker; he inscribed a copy of The Countess Kathleen to him in 1892 [Berg Coll., NYPL], read Dracula with Ezra Pound, and was only put off a proposed visit to Dracula’s original castle (though Yeats thought it was in Austria, not Transylvania) by the outbreak of a world war in 1914.’ (See R. F. Foster, ‘Protestant Magic: W. B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History’ [rep.] in Jonathan Allison, ed., Yeats’s Political Identities, Michigan UP 1996, p.91.

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Emily Lawless: Jin Liu, in ‘Emily Lawless: A Prose Writer’ (MA Diss., UUC 2003), discussing the title-character of Lawless’s novel Maelcho (1894), who is described as a “Child-man” (p.355) - thus anticipating the usage that Stoker applies to Count Dracula [see infra].

James Joyce (1) - Stephen Hero [1944] : Stephen in conversation with Cranly is compelled to define “modern” and says: ‘The modern spirit is vivisective. […] The modern method examines its territory by the light of day. Italy has added a science to civilisation by [190] putting out the lantern of justice and considering the criminal in production and in action. All modern political and religious criticism dispenses with presumptive States [and] presumptive Redeemers and Churches. [and] It examines the entire community in action and rconstructsthe spectacle of redemption.’ (Stephen Hero [rev. edn.], ed. Slocum & Cahoon, London: Jonathan Cape 1969, pp.190-91.]

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James Joyce (2) - Ulysses: One of the crimes alleged against Leopold Bloom in the “Circe” episode of Ulysses is that he made a pass at a lady outside the house - presumably medical rooms - of Sir Thornley Stoker, the brother of Bram Stoker (not mentioned in the text). Mrs Yelverton Barry says in evidence: ‘Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker’s one sleety day during [591] the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen.’ (Ulysses, Bodley Head Edn., 1965 &c., pp.591-92.) The only conceivable allusion to Dracula in “Circe” falls on the final page when Stephen, still delusional, seems to think of his mother again: ‘Stephen: (Groans) Who? Black panther vampire. (He [701] sighs and stretches himself, then murmurs thicking with prolonged vowels) / Who … drive … Fegrus …. now / And pierce … wood’s woven shade? …’ (pp.701-02) - the poem being Yeats’s which Joyce recited to his mother.

Thornley Stoker [Sir], br. of Bram Stoker was ‘on the look-out for a post in a Museum’, according to George Moore (Vale, 1914, p.123; quoted in Adrian Frazier, Napoleon in a Dress: Robert O’Byrne: Hugh Lane in The Irish Review, No. 25 (Summer 2001), p.179 [n.2].

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Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909) is the subject of remarks in Ann Saddlemyer, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs W. B. Yeats (OUP 2002): ‘Grief [at the death of her father] may well hae led her to Cesare Lombroso’s recently translated apologia, After Death - what? Spiritual Phenomena and their Interpretation, which she had read in 1902. However, with her usual diligence she pursued the study of spiritualism far beyond the French psychiatrist’s somewhat naive and heavy-handed discussion of conversion to belief in the reality of thought transference and finally, through experiments with the medium Eusapia Paladino, phantasmic activity and reincarnation. (Ironically Lombroso, who held the chair of criminal anthropology at the University of Turin, began his career as a sceptical scientist concentrating on the study of cretins and criminals in an attempt to establish a theory of degeneracy; be examing their brain structure, he concluded too that women are natural criminals.)’ (p.43.) Cf. Van Helsing: ‘The Count is a criminal and of criminal type. Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him, and qua criminal he is of imperfectly formed mind.’ (Dracula, 406). [See also under Joyce, supra.]

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Max Nordau - see Marjorie Howes, Yeats’s Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness (1996), Chap. I: “That sweet insinuating feminine voice [….; &c.]’: ‘[…] Sexual pathology and effeminacy were central to contemporary descriptions of decadence, as were the decadent’s similarities to the perceived depravities of the New Woman. Freud and Breuer notwithstanding, the Celt’s hysteria and decadence were also culturally linked to some late nineteenth-century theories of degeneration; as Daniel Pick has argued, such theories expressed fears about too much progress and civilization as well as too little [Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c1848-1918, Cambridge UP 1989. Many of [Matthew] Arnold’s Celtic traits were also the same qualities that were to characterize Max Nordau’s 1895 portrait of the decadent artistic degenerate. Although Nordau [in Degeneration, London: William Heinemann 1913] acknowledged that degeneration afflicted both men and women, its symptoms, which resemled and often occurred in conjunction with those of hysteria, were particularly feminine. Arnold’s feminization of the Celt found further echoes in the work of Otto Weineger, whose “anti-feminine” and racist theories involved extensive comparison of Jews and women in his influential book Sex and Character (1903). Like Arnold, Weininger linked femininity to necessary and natural colonial status, insisting that the Jew, “like the woman, requires the rule of an exterior authority[”]. His formulation of femininity as racial inferiority lacks both Arnold’s sympathy with the inferior race, and his relative optimism about the causes and results of assimilation; the racial meaning of femininity had become less ambiguous, more decidedly damning. (p.24.) For further Irish literary associations with Nordau, see John Wilson Foster, ‘Against Nature? Science and Oscar Wilde’, in Between Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture (Dublin: IAP 2009), under Wilde > Commentary [infra].

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Bad blood? The name of Dracula may derive from the Irish words droch fhola, meaning bad blood, according to Dr Mulvey-Roberts, senior lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. (See Jamie Smyth, ‘Academic digs into Dracula’s Irish roots’, in The Irish Times, 5 Aug. 2004, reporting on the Bram Stoker Summer School.)

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Liver salts? Stoker attributed the inspiration for his grim tale in Dracula to nightmare brought on by an injudicious supper of dressed crab that he had eaten. (See Patricia Craig, review of Paul Murray, From the Shadow of Dracula, in The Irish Times, 14 Aug. 2004, Weekend.)

Home-rule: Stoker styled himself a ‘philosophical Home-Ruler’ (Personal Reminiscences, 1906, Vol. 1, pp.26-31 [p.29]; Vol. 2, pp.343-44) - presumably meaning one who accepted Home Rule as more necessary than ideal.

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Grand Old Man: Stoker sent a presentation copy of The Snake’s Pass (1890) to W. E. H. Gladstone, the Liberal premier, and was congratulated by him for making the case of ‘oppression by a “gombeen” man’.

Stage version: a stage-version of Dracula was produced by H. Dean and J. L. Balderston (NY Samuel French [1933]).

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Film version (1): First of various film versions was the adaptations of the novel in F. W. Murnau’s silent-film Nosferatu (1922; var. 1921). A restored edition with colour tints was screened in Dublin IFC in 1997. Todd Browning made an early talkie-version as Dracula (1931). More than 200 films have been made on Stoker’s vampire theme.

Film version (2): The main-character in a film on the theme with Brad Pitt (c.1990), set chiefly in Louisiana, describes the novel as ‘the vulgar fictions of a demented Irishman’.

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Cross-roads (1): Oliver St. John Gogarty writes in I Follow St. Patrick (Rich & Cowan 1938): ‘God save all and sundry from their biographers, particularly to-day, when they wait till a man is dead and cannot defend himself, and then run a stake through his body at the cross roads in the form of a “Life” with all the envy and hostility of friends.’ (p.187.)

Cross roads (2): At the political ousting of Charles Haughey from government, Conor Cruise O’Brien wrote in the Observer: ‘If I saw Mr. Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads, with a stake driven through his heart – politically speaking – I should continue to wear a clove of garlic round my neck, just in case.’ (Observer, 10 Oct. 1982.)

A. T. Q. Stewart, Edward Carson (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981), comments that Stoker was son of a Dublin clerk who had won his way [to] the university and was renowned for his prowess as an athlete of ability. [6]

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Famine fungus: ‘One man, a Church of Ireland Minister, the Reverend M. J. Berkley, correctly diagnosed the mould on the plants as a “vampire fungus”. Forty years later it was identified as Phytophthora infestans.’ (See Thomas Keneally, The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New, London: Chatto & Windus 1998, p.107.)

Murtagh Griffin was the intermediate land-agent who drew from Aogán O’Rahilly the malefaction of his most Rabelaisian verses: ‘For ever, O rude stone, bind down with zeal/The wandering rake by whom the country has been woefully despoiled …]’; cited in Benedict Kiely, ‘Land Without Stars; Aodhagan O’Rahilly’, in A Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays (Cork UP 1999), pp.8-30, p.14.

Autograph letters: Catalogue of valuable printed books, autograph letters [of Walt Whitman] including the library of the late Bram Stoker, Esq. … &c. (London: Dryden Press [for] Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge 1913).

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Notebooks: The original notes of Dracula (8 March 1890-17 March 1896, collected and mounted by Stoker’s lit. executor before sale at Sotheby’s, 7 July 1913; bought by a Mr Drake for item 182; subsequently purchased from Philadelphia dealer by Rosenbach Museum and Library on 25 Feb. 1970. (See Barbara Belford, Bram Stoker, 1996, p.261, ftn.)

Bram Stoker Society & Summer School held annually in Ireland, chaired by Leslie Shepard, 1 Lakelands Close, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin.

Urn burial, &c.: Stoker was cremated at Golders Green and his ashes placed in an urn in the East Columbarium there; his wife Florence’s ashes were scattered on her instructions in the Garden of Rest in front of the Ernest George Columbarium; Abraham Stoker, Snr., was bur. in the English Cemetery, Naples; Charlotte Stoker, mother of the writer, lies in St. Michan’s, Church, Dublin. See Ray Bateson, The End: An Illustrated Guide to the Graves of Irish Writers, Kilcock: Meath: Irish Graves Assoc. 2004).

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