3. Abraham "Bram" Stoker
Lived 1847-1912
Born in Dublin, Ireland
Is the third of seven children
His father is Abraham Stoker and his mother is
Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley
4. Early career
He became interested in theater and became a
critic for the Dublin Evening Mail
Became friends with Henry Irving
5. Personal Life
In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe
On 31 December 1879, Bram and Florence's only
child, Irving Noel Thornley Stoker was born
6. Lyceum Theatre and later career
The Stokers moved to London, where Stoker
became acting manager and then business
manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London
7. Early Works
The Primrose Path (1875)
The Snake's Pass (1890)
The Watter's Mou' (1895)
The Shoulder of Shasta (1895)
Dracula (1897)
8. Dracula
Stokers most famous work
Similarities with Vlad the Impaler
9. Death
After suffering a number of strokes, Stoker died in
London, 20 April 1912
10. Quotations
There is no honour due to fine clothes, but
only to what is in the man himself who
wears them.
People cannot always talk sense if they talk
much.
We learn of great things by little experiences.
Stoker was bedridden with an unknown illness until he started school at the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years." He was educated in a private school run by the Rev. William Woods.
In December 1876 he gave a favourable review of Henry Irving's Hamlet at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. Irving invited Stoker for dinner at the Shelbourne Hotel where he was staying. They became friends. Stoker also wrote stories, and in 1872 "The Crystal Cup" was published by the London Society, followed by "The Chain of Destiny" in four parts in The Shamrock . In 1876, while a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote a non-fiction book ( The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland , published 1879), which remained a standard work. Furthermore, he possessed an interest in art, and was a founder of the Dublin Sketching Club in 1874.
She was a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde. Stoker had known Wilde from his student days, having proposed him for membership of the university’s Philosophical Society while he was president. Wilde was upset at Florence's decision, but Stoker later resumed the acquaintanceship, and after Wilde's fall visited him on the Continent.
Before writing Dracula , Stoker met Ármin Vámbéry who was a Hungarian writer and traveler. Dracula likely emerged from Vámbéry's dark stories of the Carpathian mountains. Stoker then spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires. Dracula is an epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic, but completely fictional, diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to his story, a skill he developed as a newspaper writer. At the time of its publication, Dracula was considered a "straightforward horror novel" based on imaginary creations of supernatural life. "It gave form to a universal fantasy . . . and became a part of popular culture."
He was cremated, and his ashes placed in a display urn at Golders Green Crematorium. After Irving Noel Stoker's death in 1961, his ashes were added to that urn. The original plan had been to keep his parents' ashes together, but after Florence Stoker's death, her ashes were scattered at the Gardens of Rest. To visit his remains at Golders Green, visitors must be escorted to the room the urn is housed in, for fear of vandalism.
