Bram Stoker (1847 - 1912)
1899 edition of 'Dracula'
April 20th 1912: Bram Stoker dies
On this day in 1912, the Irish author Bram Stoker died in London aged 64. Stoker, born as Abraham Stoker in Dublin in 1847, studied mathematics at the University of Dublin and went on to become a civil servant. However, he long displayed a talent for writing, and ended up in a management position at London’s illustrious Lyceum Theatre. His first forays into fiction writing were modest successes, but were overshadowed by his 1897 masterpiece Dracula. Originally titled The Undead, the horror story told of the struggle between the vampire Count Dracula and vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing. It has traditionally been claimed that the titular character was inspired by fifteenth-century Transylvanian despot Vlad the Impaler, but this has recently been called into question, and Stoker himself said the character came to him in a nightmare after eating too much dressed crab. Dracula, while not inventing the concept of a vampire (which was a trope already seen in earlier work like the 1871 Carmilla), defined modern perceptions of the supernatural beings. Stoker continued writing until his death, though none of his novels have reached the same fame as Dracula. The Irish author was well travelled, and counted among his acquaintances U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, and authors Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Bram Stoker died in 1912, leaving a legacy of great literary achievement; Dracula remains one of the most famous fictional characters in history, with more than one thousand novels and two hundred films featuring the iconic vampire.
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