Stoker, Bram

Entry updated 8 April 2024. Tagged: Author, Theatre.

(1847-1912) Irish author, civil servant, theatrical manager closely associated with Henry Irving and the actress Ellen Terry, and playwright. He is best known as the author of Dracula (1897; rev with cuts 1901), the classic Vampire novel. Although his fantasies are in the weird and occult fields, his writings do contain sf elements. These, however, are generally treated as products of Magic rather than of science, as in The Snake's Pass (1890), a tale featuring a search for the crown of the Western Irish snake king, and as in The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), in which an Ancient Egyptian princess, adept in an ancient science, rests in a form of Suspended Animation. The Lair of the White Worm (1911; cut 1925; vt The Garden of Evil 1966), centres on an antediluvian and malignly intelligent serpent-like Monster obscurely linked to a secretly murderous woman [for the Lamia theme, see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy unde links below]; this novel was very freely adapted for Ken Russell's film The Lair of the White Worm (1988). Other fantasy works include Under the Sunset (coll 1881), consisting of allegorical fairy tales for children; The Mystery of the Sea (1902), centred on the Baconian cipher (see Francis Bacon); the Ruritanian romance The Lady of the Shroud (1909); and Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (coll 1914; vt Dracula's Curse 1968), in which the title story is a chapter excised from Dracula.

Although not a direct influence in sf, Stoker is of considerable importance to weird fiction. Dracula has been filmed on many occasions, though never entirely in keeping with the novel, and has often been imitated. The novel's importance as Proto SF lies partly in its systematization of the vampire mythos as a quasi-scientific scholium which defines Vampires' strengths and weaknesses, and underlies most later sf rationalizations of the theme; it is also a paradigm iteration of the complex of apprehensions and sexualized loathings (see Sex) that characterizes Imperial Gothic in its prime. [JE/DRL]

see also: Hall Caine; Iron Maiden; The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; Fred Saberhagen.

Abraham Stoker

born Dublin, Ireland: 8 November 1847

died London: 20 April 1912

works

series

Dracula

Dracula (London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1897) [Dracula: hb/nonpictorial]
- Dracula (London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1901) [rev of the above with cuts: Dracula: pb/Nathan]
- Dracula (London: Penguin Books, 1993) [rev of the above with corrected text plus additional material: edited with introduction by Maurice Hinkle: pb/photo of Henry Irving]
- Dracula, A Mystery Story and Other Tales (London: Flame Tree, 2021) [vt of the above: exp as a coll: includes "Dracula's Guest" below: hb/]
Dracula; or, The Un-Dead: A Play in Prologue and Five Acts (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire: Pumpkin Books, 1997) [play: first performed Lyceum Theatre, Dublin, May 18, 1897: edited by Sylvia Starshine: hb/]
Dracula's Guest, and Other Weird Stories (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1914) [coll: Dracula: hb/Handforth]
- Dracula's Curse (New York: Tower Books, 1968) [coll: vt of the above: Dracula: pb/]

individual titles

The Snake's Pass (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1890) [though dated 1891 the UK edition may precede: in the publisher's Harper's Franklin Square Library New Series: pb/nonpictorial]
The Mystery of the Sea (London: William Heinemann, 1902) [hb/]
The Jewel of Seven Stars (London: William Heinemann, 1903) [hb/]
- The Jewel of the Seven Stars (London: Arrow Books, 1962) [vt of the above: pb/Roger Hall]
- The Jewel of Seven Stars (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1972) [cut version of the above: pb/John Cayea]
The Lady of the Shroud (London: William Heinemann, 1909) [hb/]
- The Lady of the Shroud (New York: Paperback Library, 1966) [cut of the above: pb/Victor Kalin]
The Lair of the White Worm (London: William Rider and Son, 1911) [hb/]
- The Lair of the White Worm (London: Foulsham and Co, 1925) [cut version of the above, removing over 100pp to give a work of 28 rather than 40 chapters: hb/]
- The Garden of Evil (New York: Paperback Library, 1966) [vt of the above: pb/Victor Kalin]

collections

Under the Sunset (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1881) [coll: illus/hb/W Fitzgerald and W V Cockburn]
Midnight Tales (London: Peter Owen, 1990) [coll: edited by Peter Haining: illus/various: hb/Thomi Wroblewski]
Old Hoggen and Other Adventures (Dublin, Ireland: Swan River Press, 2017) [coll: hb/Jason Zerrillo]
The Burial of the Rats: and Other Tales of the Macabre (London: British Library, 2023) [coll: edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes: hb/nonpictorial]

about the author

H Ludlum. A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker (London: The Fireside Press, 1962) [nonfiction: biography: hb/]
David J Skal. Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1990) [nonfiction: illus/various: hb/still of Bela Lugosi and Dorothy Peterson]
- David J Skal. Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen (London: Faber and Faber, 2004) [nonfiction: rev of the above: hb/]
Carol Margaret Davison and Paul Simpson-Housley, editors. Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking Through the Century, 1897-1997 (Toronto, Ontario: Dundurn Press, 1997) [nonfiction: anth: pb/from Pieter Bruegel the Elder]
David J Skal. Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula (New York: Liveright, 2016) [nonfiction: hb/]
Roger Luckhurst, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Dracula (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 2017) [nonfiction: anth: pb/]
John Sutherland. Who Is Dracula's Father? and Other Puzzles in Bram Stoker's Gothic Masterpiece (London: Icon Books, 2017) [nonfiction: hb/photographic]

links

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