Bram Stoker: 1889-1896 - the Years of Dracula

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1889 : The Snake’s Pass, a novel set in the 19th-c. west of Ireland, and centre on hated moneylender Black Murdock, serialised in The People and other provincial papers, 1889; published as book Nov. 1890; sends a presentation copy to Gladstone; passes three weeks at Whitby, staying at 6 Royal Crescent, summer 1890; makes his first notes for Dracula and reads Wilkinson’s Account of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820) in Whitby Public Library, encountering name of ‘Dracula’ there; learns that the Dmitry ran aground there on 24 Oct. 1885 from coastal guardsman and local Gazette, 1890; writes to Michael Davitt to elicit favourable review of The Snake’s Pass in The Labour World, 1890; meets Violet Hunt and her circle near Whitby, 1890; called to the English bar, 30 April 1890, but never takes a client; promotes efforts to produce a stage-version of William O’Brien’s When We Were Boys for the London stage, 1890; contribs. to The Nineteenth Century, Fortnightly Review; and occas. to The Daily Telegraph; joint-ventures with William Heinemann to relaunch Tauchnitz series; gains Tennyson’s approval for a stage adaptation of his Becket, 1891; undertakes walking tour in Scotland visiting Slains Castle, poss. inspiration for Dracula’s abode, 1893; issues “The Squaw” (1893), a story; involved with Mark Twain in Paige Compositor Manufacturing Co., an abortive type-setting scheme, soon overthrown by Mergenthaler’s Linotype; Irving knighted on Queen’s birthday list at instance of Gladstone, 1895; br. Thornley Stoker (Pres. of Royal Coll. of Surgeons, Dublin), also knighted, 1895; portrait of Florence Stoker by Walter Osborne exhibited and admired at Royal Academic (London), Summer 1895; passes two summers at Kilmarock Arms Hotel, Cruden Bay [meaning ‘blood of the Danes’], Scotland, composing Dracula, 1895-96;

1896 : travels to USA with Irving, winter 1896; feuding between Irving and Shaw; on 20 May 189[6] signs contract with Archibald Constable (2 Whitehall Gdns. Westminster) for a novel provisionally called “The Un-dead” and inspired by ancient tales of vampirism and some contemporary reportage of 1887 but also heavily influenced by “Carmilla”, the vampire tale by J. S. Le Fanu whose example Stoker had already followed in “The Chain of Destiny” (Shamrock, 1875); a typescript of the novel published as Dracula on 26 May 1897; borrowed a substantial sum from Hall Caine; Dracula went into a 6p. Popular Edn. in 1901; dramatic copyright protected by an advertised reading at Lyceum on morning of 18 May 1897; Irving repeatedly refuses to play part of Dracula; Stokers move to 18 St Leonard’s Terrace, Chelsea, London; visits America with Irving for the second time, Oct. 1903-April 1904, and [seemingly] presents the typescript of Dracula to the unknown American who partly inspired it by providing vampire-material from The World (NY) in 1896; Lyceum scenery destroyed in storage by fire, 18 Feb. 1898; Irving falls ill with pleurisy and signs away the Lyceum to a consortium without consulting Stoker; Stoker writes cryptic biographical notice on himself for Who’s Who (under recreations, ‘pretty much the same as those of the other children of Adam’); departs aboard SS Marquette on US tour, Oct. 1899;

1897 : published Dracula [...]

ENG105C1A: University of Ulster