BRAM STOKER

THRILLER MIND MAP The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandr...

BRAM STOKER

BRAM STOKER - Abraham "Bram" Stoker was born in 1847 to Abraham Stoker, a senior civil servant, and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley near Dublin, Ireland. Bedridden with illness until he started school, he recovered and attended Trinity College, where he met Oscar Wilde. Stoker married Florence Balcombe, whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde. Wilde became upset at her decision to marry Stoker, but later resumed a social and literary relationship. Bram and Florence's only child, a son named Irving Noel Thornley Stoker, was born in 1879. Stoker involved himself in London's high society and wrote theater reviews. He became assistant to actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned. He toured America with Irving, where he met President McKinley and Roosevelt, along with his literary idol Walt Whitman. As literary staff, he wrote for The Daily Telegraph newspaper: The Crystal Cup, The Chain of Destiny, The Snake's Pass, The Lady of the Shroud and The Lair of the White Worm. Before writing Dracula, Stoker met Hungarian Ármin Vámbéry, who shared folklore and mythos of the Carpathian Mountains. On a visit to Whitby, England; Stoker got the inspiration to write Dracula, in 1897. He is said to have visited castles, crypts and the locales featured in Carmilla, written by Sheridan Le Fanu. Stoker began writing Dracula only weeks after Oscar Wilde's conviction for homosexuality. He conducted research at The London Library and never traveled to Transylvania. An epistolary novel, Dracula is a collection of diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, a style developed while working as a newspaper writer. Stoker corresponded with, and participated in, long-term relationships with many important men over his lifetime. Walt Whitman, Henry Irving, Oscar Wilde and Hall Caine, to name a few. Reportedly, his marriage was sexless, and he died of syphilis, just like Oscar Wilde. His letters, research and journals were released posthumously, filled with effusive pledges to the comradeship of men and Grecian themes, unsubtle codes for homosexuality. Much of Dracula’s homoeroticism is said to derive from his own repressed/ thinly veiled sexual fantasies. Late in life, when he demanded imprisonment of homosexual authors, he did so to divert attention from himself, and pay penitence for his own self-loathing. Just as the monster in Wilde’s book, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, is a self-portrait of the artist, so is the vampire depicted in Stoker’s Dracula. The vampire, a mincing monster in evening wear, creeps secretively in shadows, imprisoned by his own vices, with an undying thirst for beautiful young men. Victorians were terrified of being outed, a source of the longing, captivity, coded language, and secrecy. The specter of death was central to Stoker’s most famous character, but his best book was relatively unknown in his lifetime. Stoker had several strokes and died in London in 1912. Florence Stoker published Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories in 1914. When FW Murnau released Nosferatu in 1922, starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok, Florence sued due to copyright infringement, and won. The court ordered all existing prints burned, but a single print survived which had already been distributed. Duplicated over the years, it took on its own life as a fan favorite. The first authorized version of Dracula was released in 1931. Universal Studio’s version, starred Bela Lugosi. The pre-code film was staged with a similar extravagance as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera.Dracula became cemented as a character, as an icon in popular culture. While vampire legends weren’t new, Dracula’s place in film, TV, radio, comics and fiction has never decreased in popularity. Lost until the 80s, the original 541-page manuscript of Dracula was found in Pennsylvania. Typed pages handwritten notations, scribbled in the margins, with THE UN-DEAD on the title page, changed at the last minute to DRACULA.