Abraham Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1847 into a middle class protestant family.  His father was a civil servant and Bram seemed destined to follow in his path.  He excelled at Trinity College as both scholar and athlete.  While in college he was introduced the works of American poet Walt Whitman, and became an instant and devoted fan.  He wrote Whitman a long, gushing letter praising his work, but did not mail it until four years later.  

A series of events occurred while at Trinity that would change the direction of his life forever.  A theatrical touring group came to Dublin offering a production of Sheridan's The Rivals featuring a young actor named Henry Irving, later to become Sir Henry Irving, the most highly revered Shakespearean actor of the period.  Stoker was mesmerized by Irving's charismatic performance, but was disappointed to find only a cursory mention of the event in the next day's Dublin Evening Mail.  A second tour by Irving four years later produced equally unsatisfactory mention in the Mail, prompting an outraged young Bram to march into the offices of the newspaper and offer himself for the unpaid position of theater critic.  He got the job, and thus when Irving (now a star of the London stage) returned to Dublin a third time, Bram had the opportunity, to set down in print glowing praises of his favorite actor.  Irving read the review and was delighted to the extent that he invited the young critic to supper at his hotel, and began a friendship that would last until Irving's death many years later. 

Subsequently, Irving took over ownership and renovation of London's Lyceum Theatre, and asked Stoker to come to London to manage the theater and Irving's career.  Bram immediately resigned his dreary civil service position, married a young lady he had recently been courting, the beautiful Florence Balcombe, an ex-flame of a young Oscar Wilde, and rushed off to London with new bride in tow to come to Irving's aid. 

For the next 27 years, Stoker and Irving were an inseparable team, Bram supervising all the business aspects of the Lyceum and its productions, and Irving casting, directing and starring in the plays.  They toured America six times, during which time Bram got to meet his beloved Walt Whitman, who was quite taken with Stoker, actually remembering his giddy letter from some years before. They corresponded until the poet's death. 

Apart from his career at the Lyceum, Stoker began pumping out a series of fictional works, mostly Gothic romances and adventures featuring stalwart Englishmen and wily, intelligent heroines, usually more savvy than the prevailing standard for Victorian females of the day.  He wrote a surprisingly ghastly collection of children's stories titled Under the Sunset, to which no reasonable person nowadays would ever consider exposing a child. 

In 1890, Stoker began making notes for the Dracula story ( his demonic villain was originally to be named "Count Wampyr") and continued working on the project until its publication in 1897, spending more time on the book than any literary project before or since.  The critics of the day were underwhelmed, to say the least, as was the English public, in general.  Although the book enjoyed steady sales and provided the Stokers with an adequate income, it never made the fortunes for Bram than it would eventually make for others after his death.  Inexplicably, the master of detail management failed to secure an American copyright for his work, and thus never received a penny in royalties from this country, where the book was much more popular.  On  a subsequent tour to America Stoker found that he was something of a celebrity due to the publication of Dracula, no longer totally outshone by the flamboyant Henry Irving. 

Bram's mother, Charlotte, was favorably impressed by the story, comparing it in a letter to her son to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  The perceptive Mrs. Stoker was right, of course, as Frankenstein and Dracula would become the twin nemeses of popular fiction in the following century. 

In 1905, Sir Henry Irving collapsed on stage at the Lyceum during a performance of Tennyson's Becket but was revived and made it home to the lobby of his hotel where he collapsed a second time and died. 

A devastated Stoker drifted through life after that, managing various theatrical projects working as a writer here and there and publishing more novels, none of which compared to the one great creation of his life.  By 1909 he had suffered two debilitating strokes, and eventually applied to the Royal Literary Fund for financial aid.  He died in 1912 at the age of 64. 

There has been speculation through the years that the character of Dracula was based on the magnetic character of Sir Henry Irving to whom Stoker was devoted.  The biographers disagree, for it seems unlikely that Bram would cast his dear friend as such a dastardly fiend.  Other questions arise regarding the ability of a rather straitlaced Victorian gentleman to produce some of the most perverse and grotesque fantasies of the time.  No one knows a great deal about his private life and perhaps we never will.  Bram Stoker has taken those secrets to the place he loved to write about, the grave. 

Hippodrome October 1997