Bram Stoker: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Bram Stoker is a world famous Irish writer who lived in the late 19th century. First of all, he is remembered for the fact that he created the most popular villain to date - Dracula. With the light hand of Stoker, vampires got not only on the pages of books, but also on television screens. And today we simply cannot imagine cinema without these charming villains.

Short biography

Born Bram Stoker in Dublin, November 8, 1847. Of the seven children of the Stoker couple, Bram was born the third. The future writer's father's name was Abraham, and his mother's name was Charlotte. Both of them were Protestants, so all their children often visited the Church of Ireland parish in Clontarf.

As a child, Bram was a rather sickly child, and until the age of 7 he could not even walk. It is believed that these sad events were reflected in his character - Dracula, like the writer himself, is forced to sleep for a long time. But Stoker managed to overcome the disease. And when he entered the university, he even played football and athletics.

The writer graduated with honors from Trinity College's math department. Then he got a job in a regular stateinstitution. In parallel with this, he began to earn extra money as a journalist and theater critic in one of the Dublin newspapers.

In the same years Stoker met Henry Irving, the famous English actor. And in 1878, during one of the friendly meetings, Irving invited the writer to head the Lyceum Theater, located in London. Stoker agreed and moved to the British capital. For the next 27 years, the writer acted as the actor's manager. And when Irving died in 1905, it seriously shocked Stoker. He had a stroke and spent a day unconscious.

In London, Bram Stoker made useful acquaintances. The writer's books were not yet popular; several years remained before the release of Dracula. Nevertheless, friendship with Irving helped him break into high society and acquire useful acquaintances, including Conan Doyle, Ju Whistler. Stoker's wife was Florence Balkham, whom Oscar Wilde loved.

In 1897 "Dracula" was published, bringing fame to the writer.

The writer died on April 20, 1912 in London. The cause of death was progressive paralysis.

The Creation of Dracula

The novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker without exaggeration can be called the bestseller of its time. The work was written under the influence of J. Le Fanu, the author of the novel about vampires "Carmilla", published in 1872. Stoker worked on his novel for a long 8 years, studying the legends and folklore about vampires.

The main antagonist of the work is the vampire Count Dracula. According to the most common version, the prototype of the character was the ruler of medieval Wallachia, ruler Vlad III Impaler. This ruler was famous for his bad temper and passion for massacres, for which he received the nickname Dracu, which can be translated as a dragon or devil. However, there are also studies that assure that it is not necessary to correlate the character of the novel with Tepes. Nevertheless, Bram Stoker himself makes a reservation in his work and informs the reader that he really took the prince of Wallachia as a prototype for his monster. Indeed, first mistaking this historical figure for a vampire due to a mistranslation.

Extraordinary Success

Bram Stoker has lived on forever as the creator of the most famous vampire. Indeed, this book is one of the most filmed. The first film about Dracula was released back in 1921, and a year later a more famous film adaptation appeared - Nosferatu. Symphony of Horror. It's hard to even count all the films based on the book.

Today, Dracula already gets into cartoons and anime, appears on the pages of manga and comics, becomes the hero of computer games. It is difficult to say in what form of art this hero was not exploited.

Bram Stoker Books

Few people know, but Stoker is not only the author of Dracula. Here are some of them:

• "The Mummy's Curse, or the Stone of the Seven Stars" (1907) - in the center of the story is the daughter of an Egyptologist, Margaret, who becomes involved in mystical events, the cause of which is hidden in the depthscenturies.
• The Lady in the Shroud is a 1909 novel.
• Lair of the White Worm, Stoker's last work, was published in 1911.

Bram Stoker's works, as you can see, are dedicated to various monsters and mysterious events. Today we would rank his books in the horror genre.