Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula

by Belford, Barbara

• ISBN13: 9780306810985
• ISBN10: 0306810980
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-02-07
• Publisher: Da Capo Press

Summary

"What a splendid subject to sink one's teeth into," raved theWashington Post. Here was a six-foot-two Irishman with a red bearda Victorian family man, a spirited debater, and the author of novels and short stories largely forgotten today. All, of course, except forDracula, which has enjoyed countless stage and screen incarnations and haunted the dreams of many generations. Bram Stoker lived at the very center of late-Victorian social and artistic life and numbered among his friends Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Whistler, William Gladstone, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. But it was his relationship with the mesmerizing, domineering actor Henry Irving that may have played the most crucial role in Stoker's lifea real-life monster who ultimately led to Stoker's most famous creation. In this book that theBaltimore Suncalled "superb," Barbara Belford draws on unpublished archival material to reveal the links between the reticent author's life, his vampire tale, and the political, occult, cultural, and sexual background of the 1890s.

Author Biography

Barbara Belford has written several biographies on Victorian literary figures, including Violet Hunt and Oscar Wilde. A professor emeritus at Columbia University, she lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
Prologue	3	(10)
1 DUBLIN DREAMS (1847--1878)
The Dreamer	13	(16)
Trinity Man	29	(19)
Drama Critic	48	(22)
Henry Irving	70	(21)
2 LONDON LIMELIGHT (1878--1884)
The Lyceum	91	(16)
First Nights	107	(16)
The Beefsteak Room	123	(23)
America	146	(27)
3 LITERARY OVERTURES (1884--1895)
Mephistopheles	173	(20)
The Bloody Play	193	(18)
The Occult	211	(22)
Cruden Bay	233	(18)
4 DRACULA'S SECRETS (1895--1912)
Shaw's Dilemma	251	(18)
Dracula Debuts	269	(20)
Farewells	289	(18)
The Last Wave	307	(16)
Epilogue	323	(10)
Acknowledgments	333	(2)
Notes	335	(24)
Selected Bibliography	359	(6)
Index	365	(12)
Photographic and Illustration Credits	377