Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Bram Stoker, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2467 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
This is the complete collection (includes Drac Guest, Judge's House, as well as Burial of the Rats and others.) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

One of Stoker's best
I consider this to be one of Stoker's best books.I would rate it right up there with "Dracula" and "The Jewel of the Seven Stars".The short stories in this collection are great.I especially liked the stories `Dracula's Guest' (which is supposed to be an exercised chapter from Dracula) and `The Judge's House'.

The nine stories in this collection are:

Dracula's Guest
The Judge's House
The Squaw
The Secret of the Growing Gold
A Gipsy Prophecy
The Coming of Abel Behenna
The Burial of the Rats
A Dream of Red Hands
Crooken Sands

If you enjoyed "Dracula" you should definitely read this book.

Terrific stories from a true master of horror
Even had Bram Stoker not penned the fabulously successful Dracula, efforts such as the stories in this book would more than qualify him as a gifted, masterful writer, with a special penchant for writing horror.The most prominent story in these pages is of course "Dracula's Guest," a story excised from the final manuscript of Dracula.This is an interesting, well-told tale, but its exclusion from the aforementioned novel seems to me to be rather inconsequential.The real jewel of this collection is "The Judge's House."I have read this story several times over the last decade or so, and I must say that this is my favorite horror story of all time.It somewhat chagrins me to make such a pronouncement, thinking of the masterful tales of Lovecraft, Poe, and King, yet I am compelled to make it.The ending may be somewhat cliched , but the dark, brooding, smothering atmosphere Stoker creates in this house is powerful and brilliant.The Judge's House may well be the most haunted house in literature.

The other seven stories are less noteworthy but eminently readable.Again, there are some cliches to be found among them, but they all "work.""The Squaw" is my least favorite--it is, to some degree, silly n terms of its characters and ending.I should also add that animal lovers such as myself may well be somewhat traumatized by one incident in the story--I certainly was."The Secret of the Growing Gold," "The Gypsy Prophecy" and "The Coming of Abel Behenna" are pretty standard fare."The Burial of the Rats" presents a thrilling, well-thought-out story of danger and escape (as well as a grim portrait of some of society's underbelly)."A Dream of Red Hands" is a sort of moralistic story that puts me in mind of some of Hawthorne's work.Finally, "Crooken Sands" is a good doppelganger tale whose presentation and overall air seem different, if not unique, from the other tales in this book.If you love old Scottish dialogue, you will reap some benefits from this story--for the rest of us, though, it makes for some slightly harder reading (but I think the story would be much less effective without it).

All in all, Stoker was a more than capable short story writer, even though he did sometimes stick too closely to the classic form; cliches and predictable plot points do diminish the quality of a few stories but by no means do they seriously hamper the effectiveness of them.It is unfortunate that many people think Stoker wrote Dracula and nothing else.The selections in this book are classic horror stories that only help to grant legitimacy to the genre.

The Replacement Chapter
This "short story" was originally part of "Dracula." It was left out at the behest of the publisher and published after Stoker'sdeath by his wife.I've read "Dracula" many times in my life,and enjoy "Dracula's Guest" as a "lost chapter".It isobvious where the account fits into the book because it builds up to theletter from D. to the innkeeper which *is* in the book.

In defense ofthe original publisher's ax to the chapter, the story is much more rapidpaced and has less of the "haunting realness" that rest of"Dracula" has - it is more in the pulp style of Stoker's"Lair of the White Worm".

SPOILER >> It adds a littledepth to Jonathan Harker's journey to the castle in the form of aforeshadowing encounter with another vampire. << SPOILER

A very worthy audio classic for horror and classic fans
I was amazed when I listened to "Dracula's Guest" and "TheSecret of the Growing Gold" on this cassette. I am a fan of classicstories, horror films and Victor Garber, but I had never owned an audiocassette of a classic story until now. While the possibility of"listening" to these stories thrilled me, I was concerned if Iwould enjoy them. My fears were very quickly laid to rest. Victor Garber isa wonderful stage-trained actor who has a very understated and unforcedvocal delivery. So, I can only describe these recordings as"classy". The way he changes his voice with each character isvery effective although it is clearly his own all the way through.

Someof you may prefer reading over listening but don't overlook buying thiscassette. For one thing, it is more fun to listen to these stories thanreading silently, and, probably, reading aloud. Both stories are fairlyeasy to follow, but "The Secret of the Growing Gold" is thehardest. Despite that, I strongly feel that this audio cassette is amust-hear. I recommend this to all fans of classic stories and audio books.

Best short story of horror genre for it's time period
The book lives up to it's title. It's a fantastic read for something of its age. It easily beats off the new-comers to the horror genre. I'd recommend it to people who have at least a little experience with BramStoker's "Dracula" or something similar. ... Read more

Amazon.com
"I am here to do Your bidding, Master. I am Your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful." These words spoken by Renfield to Dracula might have been said by Bram Stoker to his boss, the mesmerizing, domineering actor Henry Irving. Stoker was such a mild-mannered, secretive man that the real subject of this acclaimed biography turns out to be the genesis of his novel Dracula, and Irving--the man who, according to Barbara Belford, inspired its famous monster. Other fascinating characters who appear in Stoker's life are Florence Stoker (courted by Oscar Wilde before Bram married her), Ellen Terry (Irving's leading lady), Walt Whitman, the aging Lord Tennyson, W. S. Gilbert, William Gladstone, Lady Speranza Wilde, her son Oscar, Queen Victoria (who knights Irving, the first actor so honored), George Bernard Shaw, and Mark Twain. As Margot Peters writes in the New York Times Book Review, "Stoker himself is pretty much swamped in these heavy seas. But as Ms. Belford's intelligent, well-written and always interesting book makes clear, Stoker lived to serve. His revenge for lifelong self-effacement was Dracula." Book Description
The first full-scale biography of the complex man known today as the author of Dracula, but who was famous in his own time as the innovative manager of London's Lyceum Theatre, home of the greatest English actors of the day, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.

Barbara Belford tells the story of Stoker the hidden man. On the surface: the very model of Victorian modesty, reserve, and duty, the devoted husband and father. In actuality: a man whose emotional and working energies were in large part expended on the care and cultivation of the flamboyant, mesmerizing genius of the stage, Henry Irving.

We see Stoker the writer of novels and stories that were imbued with sexuality, violence, and the celebration of death -- works at opposite poles from the decorum he presented in society. And Barbara Belford shows us in Dracula a mirror of the undercurrents of Stoker's own life, as well as a masked exploration of subjects utterly forbidden in his time -- seduction, rape, necrophilia, incest, voyeurism -- universal taboos dramatized with such a myth-making edge that the novel remains resonant and unsettling almost one hundred years later.

We follow Stoker from his sickly childhood -entertained by his mother's twice-told tales of Irish hobgoblins and banshees -- to his years as a Dublin undergraduate and newspaperman, when he first wrote to his idol Wait Whitman, spilling out his innermost thoughts and beginning a lifelong correspondence that culminated in their meeting when Stoker traveled to America on tour with Irving and Ellen Terry. We see Stoker's childhood friendship with Oscar Wilde, and watch as the two young men compete for the hand of the beautiful Florence Balcombe, who became Stoker's wife. And we see Stoker in the literary and theatrical circles of Victorian London among such figures as Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Whistler, Lord Tennyson, and George Bernard Shaw.

Belford gives us a vivid picture of the man, his time, his London -- the domestic and theatrical worlds he lived in -- and the dark imaginary realms that were the wellspring of all his writings, especially of his enduring and enduringly fascinating Dracula. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Insight into Bram Stoker & His Life at the Lyceum.
Barbara Belford's "Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula" is considered to be the most scholarly and thorough of the 3 Bram Stoker biographies that have been published. But Mr. Stoker was a reticent person about whose personal life, opinions, and character there is precious little known. Whether out of humility or caution, he usually took care not to reveal himself. So what we know of Stoker comes primarily from his public life, which was thankfully shared with several grander, more loquacious personalities. Perhaps due to the scarcity of information about her subject, Barbara Belford gives Stoker's friends, colleagues, and the London theater community a lot of attention, especially Henry Irving, the great actor whose fame was dwarfed only by his ego, and whom Bram Stoker dedicated 27 years of his life to serving. Indeed, this biography of Stoker would serve well as a history of Irving's famous Lyceum Theatre for the decades that Stoker served as its acting manager.

Thebook starts by describing Stoker's childhood in Dublin, the third child born to a middle class Anglo-Irish family in 1847 during the potato famine, and his apparent debilitation until the age of 7. He grew up to be a civil servant like his father, and pursued personal interests as an unpaid drama critic for the "Evening Mail", through which Stoker met Henry Irving. After marrying the lovely Florence Balcombe, whom Oscar Wilde also courted, the Stokers moved to London whereBram's efficient management would help make the 1500-seat Lyceum Theatre fashionable and profitable. Since the Lyceum dominated Stoker's life, it dominates his biography, but Belford also discusses his trips to America on tour with the Lyceum company, his effusive admiration for Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln, and his novels and stories.

The upshot of "Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Man Who Wrote Dracula" is that Bram Stoker was a modest, hardworking man, exceedingly courteous even by Victorian standards, whose tireless work for Henry Irving was acknowledged by many but unappreciated and unrewarded by Irving himself. Stoker's genial but reserved manner harbored passionate, worshipful emotions toward his heroes, invariably men of power with larger-than-life personalities. Belford draws an occasional parallel between persons in Bram Stoker's own life and characters in "Dracula". Most notably, she sees a "sinister caricature" of Henry Irving in the vampire Count. Actress Ellen Terry seems to be reflected in Mina, and Stoker's wife Florence may have lent some of her character to Lucy. None of this is a stretch as long as one recognizes that "Dracula"'s characters don't have a single source, but many.

This biography includes a lot of good information for fans of Bram Stoker's work, but a couple of stylistic problems nagged at me. One is Belford's confusing tendency to refer to people by first or last name only, at the beginning of a chapter, instead of starting off with a full name. Another is the repeated use of the phrase "Unholy Trinity" to describe the business partnership between Henry Irving, Bram Stoker, and stage manager H.J. Loveday, which I found melodramatic. But Belford's book succeeds in creating a picture of Bram Stoker's personality without reading too much into his actions or words.

Best Book I ever read!
The main caracters in the story are Jonathan Harker, Mina Murry/Harker, and Lucy Westenras.There are several different settings, so I won,t list them specifically.Most of the book, they are in Europe in the 1800's.The plot of the books is Jonathan is a solicitor and meets the "Count".Sopposably the Count is friendly and turns evil. My opinion of the book is it is great it has some diffficult words so I recommend it to 8th grade and above.It is very interesting and fun.I liked the way that the author set up the book and the way he used everybodys point of view. ... Read more

Book Description
Graphic Classics: Bram Stoker is the seventh in a series of books which present great literature in comics and heavily illustrated format by some of the best artists working today in the fields of comics, book illustration, and fine arts. The book includes comics adaptations of "The Lair of the White Worm", an excerpt from Dracula, plus six other great stories by the great writer, Bram Stoker. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Yes, Bram Stoker did more than "Dracula" and this comic book proves it
Like Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker is considered to be a one-hit wonder in the world of literature.Of course when you are talking about novels like "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" and "Dracula," that is enough to establish your literary immortality.Both authors did write other works, and while Stoker does not have anything else in his literary resume as good as Shelley's novel "The Last Man," overall his writing output was superior."Lair of the White Worm," his last novel, written fourteen years after "Dracula," is the centerpiece of "Graphic Classics, Volume 7: Bram Stoker," but to no one's surprise his vampire count pops up in a number of pieces as well.

"Lair of the White Worm" is illustrated by Rico Schacherl and adapted by Tom Pomplum in 32 pages.Adam Salton arrives from Australia to meet with his great uncle Richard as the last surviving members of the Salton family.Adam travels to the old kingdom of Mercia in the heart of ancient Britain where strange things start happening.For example, snakes quickly crawl away from Lady Arabella March but later a mongoose attacks her. Eventually we get to the well by which the legendary White Worm came and went, and Lady Arabella has an even stranger encounter with a mongoose.Eventually Adam figures out what is going on and the goal becomes to destroy the titular creature.Do not think that the cover painting by Glenn Barr gives an indication of what the artwork is like for "Liar of the White Worm" because Schacherl's work is a lot more cartoonish.But the adaptation is solid and does a more serviceable job than the Ken Russell movie version.

"Dracula" pops up in a variety of ways in this collection.The book's introduction is a letter to Stoker by Mort Castle with a modest proposal for a new dramatic presentation of "Dracula" as a ballet (which makes sense to anybody who has seen Guy Maddin's "Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary," which both Castle and I have done)."Dracula's Voyage: An Excerpts from Dracula by Bram Stoker," adapted by John W. Pierard, retells the story of the journey of the "Demeter" that brought the count from Varna to Whitby.The black & white illustrations are more white than black, which is an interesting approach, and if Pierard is thinking about doing the entire novel that would be fine."The Dracula Gallery" has a dozen one-page illustrations based on the novel displaying a wide variety of drawing styles.Those by Michael Manning, Jeff Gather, Lisa K. Weber, Todd Schorr, and Todd Lovering stand out from the others.Then there is "Professor Abraham Van Helsing's Vampire Hunter's Guide," freely adapted by Tom Pomplun and illustrated by Hunt Emerson to humorous effect.

The rest of the volume is an interesting variety of approaches and visual styles."Torture Tower," adapted from Stoker's "The Squaw" by Onsmith Jeremi, uses a dozen panels per page to tell the story of a man on his honeymoon in Germany who makes the mistake of killing a kitten (think E.C.'s "Tales from the Crypt")."The Wondrous Child" is a fanciful fable by Stoker where the text has been edited down and there are a half dozen illustrations by Evert Geradts."The Funeral Party" is a very short story by Stoker on one page with a Richard Sala illustration opposite."The Dualists" is another edited text story, this time illustrated by Lesley Reppeteaux, which also evidences Stoker's grim sense of humor.By the time you get through these you will definitely be revising your estimation of Stoker as a one-hit wonder.

The final selection of stories gets us back to conventional comic book presentations.Artistically "The Judge's House," adapted by Gerry Alanguilan, is the most effective.I liked his close-up of the rat steadily glaring at our hero with baleful eyes; for that matter, I like the eyes of the judge and the ill-fated hero on the last couple of pages of the story."The Bridal of Death," an excerpt from "The Jewel of Seven Stars," is adapted and illustrated by J. B. Bonivert, with an almost art deco style that seems rather ill suited to Stoker's story but which is certainly striking.

Tom Pomplun's name pops up a lot in this volume because he is the designer, editor and publisher of "Graphic Classics" (he specifically edited down the text stories presented herein).You can find "Graphic Classics" devoted to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, H.G Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and O. Henry.This venture has been successful enough that a revised and expanded second edition of "Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe" has been released. There are few recognizable names (e.g., Richard Corden, Gahan Wilson), involved in these retellings, but you will see some of the names in this volume in others and will certainly come to have your favorites.I look forward to more of these volumes, especially if we get to the likes of Arthur Machen, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert Bloch that I was read in my formative years.

A worthy volume of illustrated adaptations
"Graphic Classics: Bram Stoker" serves up an excellent collection of illustrated stories by horror Grandmaster Bram Stoker.Each tale is either fully illustrated, comic book style, or text and page combined.All of the illustrations are in black and white, and feature a wide variety of styles and flair.This is definitely not the typical art you would find in a DC or Marvel comic, but is much more "arty."

There is plenty of "Dracula," Stoker's number one claim to fame, but there is also enough of his other works to let us know that he wrote more than one novel.

"Lair of the White Worm" is a great tale of jolly, haunted England and the monsters that haunt its green and pleasant land.A comic book style tale, with a Victorian flair in style.

"Torture Tower" shows the danger of being a loud-mouthed American tourist in Nuremberg.Comic book style.

"The Wondrous Child" is illustrated text, with a flight of fancy and a trip to fairy land.

"The Funeral Party" is a one-page illustrated text.Excellent dark humor.

"Dracula's Voyage" is a scratchy rendition of the first few chapters of "Dracula."Very well done.

"The Dracula Gallery" has artists taking a snatch of text as inspiration, then creating a page.

"Vampire's Hunter Guide" is acombination of Van Helsing's text and semi-humorous drawings.

"The Dualists" is an illustrated text piece of two friends and their passion.By far the most gruesome of the lot.

"The Judge's House" is comic book style, a haunted house story.

"The Bridal of Death" is adapted from "The Jewel of Seven Stars."A mummy tale.

Especially recommended to the attention of Bram Stoker fans
Graphic Classics: Bram Stoker presents illustrated novel adaptations of classic tales of terror by Bram Stoker, best known for his classic novel "Dracula." Stark black-and-white imagery by a variety of different artists (Hunt Emerson, Rico Schacherl, J.B. Bonivert, Evert Geradts) adds a stringent and often visually provocative touch to these spine-chilling and narrations which are especially recommended to the attention of Bram Stoker fans and Horror Fiction enthusiasts. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume collects some of the most significant critical responses to the works of Bram Stoker, a writer best known in our time as the author of Dracula. But Stoker wrote other works as well, and he responded to many of the issues that concerned Victorian England and which continue to concern the present-day reader. The introduction to the volume places Stoker in the larger context of the literature of his time and discusses his variety of works. Each section that follows is devoted to one of Stoker's works. Within each section are representative samples of criticism, ranging from the Victorian era to the present day. A selected bibliography concludes the volume. Through this book, Stoker emerges not only as a significant writer of horror fiction, but also as a writer concerned with the role of women in society, the social impact of science and technology, and the impact of racial and ethnic issues. ... Read more

Book Description
The popular appeal of Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, now over a hundred years old, shows little sign of waning. No other monster has endured and proliferated in quite the same way--even if we now seem to prefer interviewing, rather than staking, our vampires. It is only over the last twenty years, however, that Dracula has begun to receive much serious critical attention. The essays in this book represent the most significant contemporary work on the novel from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, including Marxist, psychoanalytical, historicist, and feminist, forming a unique collection which engages questions about the psychological and social significance of this highly transgressive and enduringly popular text. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Careless and Gossipy, but Some Interesting Anecdotes.
"The Man Who Wrote Dracula" was the second biography written about the author of the legendary work of gothic horror "Dracula", after Henry Ludlam's 1962 book "A Biography of Dracula". This biography was written in 1975 by Daniel Farson, Bram Stoker's great-nephew, whose grandfather was Bram's younger brother Tom. It has the advantage of being privy to family gossip and anecdotes, but doesn't demonstrate the scholarship of the more recent "Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula" by Barbara Belford. In fact, "The Man Who Wrote Dracula" is given to careless use of words and unsubstantiated innuendo, but includes some details of Bram Stoker's professional life not found in Belford's book.

"The Man Who Wrote Dracula" is poorly organized into 3 parts. Part One gets off to an inauspicious start by suggesting, on the first page, that Bram Stoker's debilitating childhood illness may have been psychological, which is low on the list of possibilities. It covers Stoker's time in Ireland, from his birth to his civil service career and moonlighting as a drama critic. Then it moves to London as Stoker takes the job that would define his life: acting manager of the Lyceum Theatre and assistant to the actor Henry Irving. It continues through the best years of his life at the Lyceum. Farson only gets around to talking about Stoker's writing in the last chapter, even though he had been a published author for years at that point.

Part Two concerns the origins and reception of "Dracula". There are chapters on vampire folklore, modern vampire superstitions, explanations of vampire beliefs, literary antecedents, the 15th century Wallachian prince from whom the novel took its name-Vlad "Dracula" Tepes, and Farson analyzes some of the more far-fetched interpretations of "Dracula". I have to commend Farson for stating, in reference to Vlad Tepes, that "Stoker seized on the name of Dracula, together with a vague impression of the background, and that was all". It was around the time this book was published that the theory that Count Dracula was based on the historical Vlad Tepes was becoming popular.

Part Three returns to Stoker's life, starting in 1895, when Farson claims that Stoker started writing Dracula. Stoker actually began the novel 5 years earlier, but his working notes had not been discovered until after this book was published. We follow Stoker through difficult days at the Lyceum, fraught with financial difficulties, to life after Henry Irving, to Bram Stoker's death. Farson includes more details and commentary about Stoker's advocacy of censorship of the arts than I have read elsewhere, which is interesting. His speculation -which Farson states as fact- about the cause of Stoker's death has been the cause of much debate. Farson claims that Stoker died of syphilis, because his death certificate lists "locomotor ataxia" among the causes of death. Locomotor ataxia is, indeed, syphilitic spinal sclerosis, but Stoker had several strokes in the months before his death, whose symptoms could easily have been confused with those of locomotor ataxia by an imperceptive doctor.

"The Man Who Wrote Dracula" seems carelessly written. Although it contains some interesting anecdotes, it doesn't usually mention their source. Still, "Dracula" scholars will want to read this biography and glean what they can. But it would make a confusing and underinformed introduction to Bram Stoker's life. Read Barbara Belford's 1996 biography first. ... Read more

Book Description
Beyond Dracula represents an important critical departure from the customary psychoanalytical approach to the writings of Bram Stoker. Reading Stoker as a participant in Victorian and Edwardian cultural life, this volume examines the breadth of Stoker's novel-length fiction, as well as his journalism, biographical writings and short fiction. In its consideration of questions of religion, censorship, gender and medicine, the volume will interest not merely readers of the Gothic but those involved in the study of Victorian and Edwardian culture. ... Read more

Book Description
Dracula's Crypt unearths the Irish roots of Bram Stoker's gothic masterpiece, offering a fresh interpretation of the author's relationship to his novel and to the politics of blood that consumes its characters.

An ingenious reappraisal of a classic text, Dracula's Crypt presents Stoker's novel as a subtly ironic commentary on England's preoccupation with racial purity. Probing psychobiographical, political, and cultural elements of Stoker's background and milieu, Joseph Valente distinguishes Stoker's viewpoint from that of his virulently racist, hypermasculine vampire hunters, showing how the author's dual Anglo-Celtic heritage and uncertain status as an Irish parvenu among London's theatrical elite led him to espouse a progressive racial ideology at odds with the dominant Anglo-Saxon supremacism. In the light of Stoker's experience, the shabby-genteel Count Dracula can be seen as a doppelgänger, an ambiguous figure who is at once the blood-conscious landed aristocrat and the bloodthirsty foreign invader.

Stoker also confronts gender ideals and their implications, exposing the "inner vampire" in men like Jonathan Harker who dominate and absorb the women who become their wives. Ultimately, Valente argues, the novel celebrates a feminine heroism, personified by Mina Harker, that upholds an ethos of social connectivity against the prevailing obsession with blood as a vehicle of identity.

Revealing a profound and heretofore unrecognized ethical and political message, Dracula's Crypt maintains that the real threat delineated in Dracula is not racial degeneration but the destructive force of racialized anxiety itself. Stoker's novel emerges as a powerful critique of the very anxieties it has previously been taken to express: anxieties concerning the decline of the British empire, the deterioration of Anglo-Saxon culture, and the contamination of the Anglo-Saxon race.

"Valente provides the first sustained critical commentary informed by postcolonial and poststructuralist thinking that persuasively addresses the Irish aspects of Dracula. Future critics will have to attend to Valente's rich formulations about the book's pervasive ambiguous doublings." &#151;John Paul Riquelme, editor of Dracula and author of Teller and Tale in Joyce's Fiction

"Dracula's Crypt conducts a thorough and persuasive critique of current scholarship on Bram Stoker's `Irishness,' proposes some highly original alternatives, and argues those alternatives in an extremely compelling manner. In addition, in its method the book has implications far beyond the particular text it treats: it offers an important and innovative model for the treatment of other texts and issues. The book will appeal to readers interested in Irish studies, postcolonial studies, Gothic fiction, late Victorian literature and culture, and modernism."&#151; Marjorie Howes, editor of Dracula and author of Yeats's Nations ... Read more

Book Description
In 1897, Archibald Constable & Company published a novel by the unheralded Bram Stoker. That novel, Dracula, has gone on to become perhaps the most influential novel of all time. To commemorate the centennial of that great novel, Carol Margaret Davison has brought together this collection of essays by some of the world's leading scholars. The essays analyze Stoker's original novel and celebrate its legacy in popular culture. The continuing presence of Dracula and vampire fiction and films provides proof that, as Davison writes, Dracula is "alive and sucking.""Dracula is a Gothic mandala, a vast design in which multiple reflections of the elements of the genre are configured in elegant sets of symmetries. It is also a sort of lens, bringing focus and compression to diverse Gothic motifs, including not only vampirism but madness, the night, spoiled innocence, disorder in nature, sacrilege, cannibalism, necrophilia, psychic projection, the succubus, the incubus, the ruin, and the tomb. Gathering up and unifying all that came before it, and casting its great shadow over all that came and continues to come after, its influence on twentieth-century Gothic fiction and film is unique and irresistible."-from the Preface by Patrick McGrath ... Read more

Book Description
Nearly a hundred years after its debut in 1897, Dracula is still one of the most popular of all Gothic narratives, always in print and continually adapted for stage and screen. Paradoxically, David Glover suggests, this very success has obscured the historical conditions and authorial circumstances of the novel&rsquo;s production. By way of a long overdue return to the novels, short stories, essays, journalism, and correspondence of Bram Stoker, Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals reconstructs the cultural and political world that gave birth to Dracula. To bring Stoker&rsquo;s life into productive relationship with his writing, Glover offers a reading that locates the author within the changing commercial contours of the late-Victorian public sphere and in which the methods of critical biography are displaced by those of cultural studies.
Glover&rsquo;s efforts reveal a writer who was more wide-ranging and politically engaged than his current reputation suggests. An Irish Protestant and nationalist, Stoker nonetheless drew his political inspiration from English liberalism at a time of impending crisis, and the tradition&rsquo;s contradictions and uncertainties haunt his work. At the heart of Stoker&rsquo;s writing Glover exposes a preoccupation with those sciences and pseudo-sciences—from physiognomy and phrenology to eugenics and sexology—that seemed to cast doubt on the liberal faith in progress. He argues that Dracula should be read as a text torn between the stances of the colonizer and the colonized, unable to accept or reject the racialized images of backwardness that dogged debates about Irish nationhood. As it tracks the phantasmatic form given to questions of character and individuality, race and production, sexuality and gender, across the body of Stoker&rsquo;s writing, Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals draws a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary transitional figure.
Combining psychoanalysis and cultural theory with detailed historical research, this book will be of interest to scholars of Victorian and Irish fiction and to those concerned with cultural studies and popular culture.
... Read more

Book Description
Best known today as the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker also wrote several other works, including The Jewel of Seven Stars, Lady Athlyne, and The Lair of the White Worm. In his exploration of supernatural subjects, such as vampirism, he is clearly a Gothic writer. The fantastic elements of his novels seem very much at odds with the world of science. Stoker, nonetheless, draws upon a large body of scientific theory and technological innovation throughout his writings. This book studies his blending of Gothic subjects with emerging discoveries in science and technology. The volume begins with an overview of Stoker's familiarity with scientific and technical developments. It then examines the role of science and technology in his various works, which demonstrate his familiarity with civil engineering, anthropology, physics, chemistry, and archaeology. While many of his writings seem to offer a rather uncritical celebration of science and its applications, some works, such as The Jewel of Seven Stars, reveal what happens when science oversteps its bounds. Stoker emerges as an early writer of science fiction whose work thoughtfully considers the place of science in society. ... Read more

Book Description
Since its publication in 1897 Bram Stoker's Dracula has never been out of print. Within the narrative's recesses&#151;its vaults, coffins, cells, mansions&#151;Stoker captures and inventories a host of anxieties and concerns, from the rise of a new media ecology to the status of women. Study this enduring novel with this volume of Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts presents critical essays that reflect a variety of schools of criticism on the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature. Each volume also contains an introductory essay by Harold Bloom, critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index. ... Read more