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 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, by turns president of the Phil, where he spoke inaugurally on ‘Sensationalism in Fiction and Society’ (1867); auditor of the Hist. (1872), lecturing on ‘The Necessity for Political Honesty’; his inaugural address to the Hist. made reference to the Celtic race and Ireland having gained ‘in all her suffering of centuries […] this one advantage […]. Her people have remained the same whilst other peoples have slowly changed for the worse’; responded to Prof. Dowden’s advocacy of Whitman, and wrote the American poet two lengthy letters of adulation particularly in praise of manly friendship, the first (1871) remaining unposted for four years; took Hons. in science, maths, oratory, history, and composition; brothers George, Dick and William all trained as doctors; entered 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; completed TCD MA in mathematics extra-murally; friendly with John Dillon, and others; departure of his mother and father for retirement in Switzerland; occupied lodgings at 73 Harcourt St., 30 Kildare St., 47 Kildare St., 73 Harcourt St. (again), 119 Baggot St., and 16 Harcourt St.; first story, “The Crystal Cup”, placed with London Society; received repeated rejection slips for “Jack Hommon’s Vote”; contrib. serial stories to The Shamrock incl. “The Primrose Path” (Sept. 1872), “Buried Treasure” (March 1875), “The Chain of Destiny” (May 1875); also “The Dualitists, or The Death Doom of the Double Born” (Theatre Annual, 1887); contrib. 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; organised 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 was drawn in his carriage by the students; death of father in Switzerland, Oct. 1876; met Henry Irving and formed close bond, 3 Dec. 1876; organised further visits to Dublin by Irving; wrote in diary, ‘London in view!’ (, 22 Nov. 1877);

1878: issued Duties of the Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (1878); moved to London as Irving’s mgr. (or ‘literary henchman’, acc. Shaw), opening The Lyceum in collaboration with H. J. Loveday (former stage-manager), thus forming ‘the Unholy Trinity’ that dominated the London theatre in that era, 1878-1905; met Sir Richard Francis Burton on the boat train to Dublin 1879; m. Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe, the friend of Oscar Wilde (who called her ‘Florrie’, and requested back from her the gold cross he had given), at St. Anne’s, Dawson St., Dublin, 4 Dec. 1878, she being cited on the marriage certificate as a minor; settled at 7, Southampton St., Covent Gdn., London (unfurnished rooms, £100 p.a.); according to Enid Stoker (gm. of Daniel Farson), his wife refused to have sex with him after the birth of first and only child, [Irving] Noel Thornley, in 1879; family moved to 27, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 1881, Stoker bicycling from there to work at the Lyceum Theatre off the Strand; rescued suicide from river, 13 Sept. 1882, the old man later dying on the Stoker’s dining table causing Florence to hate the house; moved to 17 St. Leonard’s Terrace; issued Under the Sunset (1882); “Lies and Lilies” (1882), story; regular visitor to the Wilde’s home at Merrion Sq., describing himself contemporaneously as a ‘philosophical Home Ruler’; undertook first Lyceum tour in America, taking Boston Theatre, 1883; visited Walt Whitman at his home, 20 March 1884 (the man Stoker repeats, ‘fulfils the boy’); visited Quebec, Sept. 1884; lectured on “A Glimpse of America” (28 Dec 1885); sailed for America to arrange Lyceum tour with Irving’s sensational version of Faust, Autumn 1886; Florence and Noel escaped from wreck of steamship Victoria nr. Dieppe, 13 April 1887; Stoker lectured in Lincoln at Chickering Hall, New York, 25 Nov. 1887, using Whitman’s “Memoranda During the War” as source; ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders in Whitechapel, 1888 - to which Stoker linked the novel in an introduction of 1888; visited Whitman for the last time and tried to persuade him to expurgate Leaves of Grasses;

1889: issued The Snake’s Pass, set in the 19th-century west of Ireland, and centre on hated moneylender Black Murdock; serialised in The People and other provincial papers, 1889, before book-publication Nov. 1890; Stoker sent a presentation copy to Gladstone; passed three weeks at Whitby, staying at 6 Royal Crescent, and making his first notes for Dracula, Summer 1890; reads Wilkinson’s Account of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820) in Whitby public library, and encounter name of ‘Dracula’; learns of how the Dmitry ran aground 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 took a client; promoted efforts to produce a stage-version of William O’Brien’s When We Were Boys for the London stage, 1890; contrib. to The Nineteenth Century, Fortnightly Review; and occas. to The Daily Telegraph; joint-ventured with William Heinemann to relaunch Tauchnitz series; gained Tennyson’s approval for a stage adaptation of Becket, 1891; walking tour in Scotland includes Slains Castle (sometimes called the inspiration for Dracula’s home, 1893; "The Squaw" (1893), a story; involved with Mark Twain in abortive type-setting scheme of Paige Compositor Manufacturing Co., but overwhelmed by Mergenthaler’s Linotype; Irving knighted on Queen’s birthday list at instance of Gladstone, 1895; Thornley Stoker (Pres. Royal Coll. Of Surgeons, Dublin), also knighted, 1895; portrait of Florence Stoker by Walter Osborne exhibited and admired at Royal Academic (London), Summer 1895;

1896: travelled to US with Irving, winter 1896; passes two summers at Kilmarock Arms Hotel, Cruden Bay [meaning ‘blood of the Danes’], Scotland, writing Dracula, 1895-96; feuding between Irving and Shaw; on 20 May 189[6] signed 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 which Stoker had already followed in “The Chain of Destiny” (Shamrock, 1875); a typescript of the novel published as Dracula on 26 May 1897; borrowed 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 moved to 18 St Leonard’s Terrace, Chelsea, London; visited America with Irving for the second time, Oct. 1903-April 1904, and prob. presented 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 Irving signs away Lyceum to consortium without consulting Stoker; Stoker writes cryptic biographical notice of self for Who’s Who (under recreations, ‘pretty much the same as those of the other children of Adam’); departure aboard SS Marquette on US tour, Oct. 1899;

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1902: death of Charlotte Stoker, 1902 (bur. St. Michan’s); increasing alienation from Irving following the latter’s marriage to Eliza Aria; summers at The Crookit Lum (cottage) at Cruden Bay, 1902 and years after, and writes there The Mystery of the Sea, a novel involving ghosts and cipher, 1902; issued The 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; returned to journalism after death of Irving in 1905; issued The Man (1905), in which Harold An Wolf, Cambridge grad. and Alaskan adventurer, is matched with Stephen Norman, a ‘New Woman’; Irving collapses and dies after a performance of his adaptation of Tennyson’s Becket during his ‘farewell’ tour in Bradford, Friday 13 Oct. 1905; Stoker contrib. to interviews to The Daily Chronicle; issued 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 returned to theatre management for David Bishpham’s musical performance of The Vicar of Wakefield, 1906; organised English section of Paris Theatrical Exhibition; appears as model for William II Building the Tower of Llondon 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); contrib. ‘Fifty Years on Stage: An Appreciation of Ellen Terry’ to The Graphic in her jubilee year, 1906;

1907: his health declined after Irving’s death in 1905; suffered a minor stroke; nursed by Florence; moved to 4 Durha[m] Place (former home of Captain Bligh), 1907; joined staff of Daily Chronicle; contrib. theatrical profiles to World (NY); participated prominently in campaign to censor ‘unclean’ books; wrote “The Censorship of Fiction” for The Nineteenth Century & After; also “Censorship of Stage Plays”, cautioning against decentralisation of Chamberlain’s duties to local authorities; contrib. “The Great White Fair in Dublin” and “The World’s Greatest Ship-building Yard” to ‘Irish Number’ of The World’s Work (Vol. 9, 1907); his Famous Impostors (1910) includes the assertion that Elizabeth I was a man in disguise; issued The Lady of the Shroud (1909), a novel ded. Geneviève Ward; suffered second stroke and received £100, 1910; sought grant from Royal Literary Fund, 1911; member of National Liberal Club; moved from Chelsea to 26, St. George’s Sq., Belgravia; issued The Lair of the White Worm (1911), in which the worm, Lady Arebella, is eradicated by the hero Adam Salton, with much sexual symbolism; defence Capt. E. J.Smith of the Titanic; d. 20 April; death cert. admitting interpretation of syphilis (disputed by Belford); obits. in Times and Irish Times, 22 April 1912, calling him ‘a typical Irishman of the best type’ and citing novels ‘of a sensational character’ without mentioning Dracula);

Posthumous: Florence Stoker sold his literary effects in a Sotheby’s auction of 317 items, 7 July 1913; moves to 4 Kinnerton Studios [now Braddock Hs.], Knightsbridge, 1914; 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; filmed colour by Hammer Films with Christopher Lee as Dracula Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, 1958 - to be followed by numerous Lee sequels; Polanski filmed skit-version with Sharon Tate as Dance of the Vampires in 1967; Francis Ford Coppola’s produced an AIDS-type Dracula in 1997; first full biography by Harry Ludlam (1962), after which another by Stoker’s grand-nephew Daniel Farson (1975), alleging that his death was caused by tertiary syphilis; another by Barbara Belford (1996); donated papers donated by Irving Collection at Stratford-upon-Avon; an archive of Stoker papers was presented to TCD Library by Noel Dobbs, having received from the writer’s dg. Ann, Aug. 1999; new biography by Paul Murray (Jon. Cape 2004) incls. much new material from papers of 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

THIS INFORMATION IS TO BE FOUND IN http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/s/Stoker,B/life.htm on December the fourth, 2008

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