Bram Stoker

One of seven children, Bram Stoker was born to upper-middle-class Irish Protestant parents in the middle of the nineteenth century; he suffered a grave illness at age seven, which caused him to turn to reading and probably prompted his interest in literature. As a young man, Stoker attended Trinity College, Dublin, and studied mathematics. He then embarked on a career in the theater, moving to London and working for the Lyceum, befriending such intellectuals as Oscar Wilde, and working as the Lyceum's stage and business manager for over a decade. Stoker later took a job at the London paper The Daily Telegraph, working as a literary reporter and critic. He began writing Dracula, his only successful novel, during this period of employment; it went on to become a sensation on its publication in 1897. Stoker wrote other novels and short stories before his death, of stroke, in 1912, but none approached the popular acclaim of Dracula. The novel has become a part of the Western popular imagination, drawn as it was from Victorian ideas of morality and reinterpretations of Central European myths about "wampyrs," or vampires.