Bram Stoker

For an author of a world-famous book who has been dead for over a century, Bram Stoker represents a strange instance in which the efforts of literary historians have been outpaced by those of literary theorists. A number of factors aligned for this to happen. For one, the Stoker family did not become especially active in stewarding Bram’s legacy until Noel Thornley Stoker, Bram’s only son, assisted Harry Ludlam’s 1962 Biography of Dracula, which was something of a watershed in the telling of Bram’s life story. Bram himself was not exactly an active participant in his own time either; the closest he came to autobiography was his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. Though Dracula was better received in its own time than is commonly realized, it would not be a stretch to say that Bram Stoker was better known for his managing role in London’s Lyceum Theatre—at the time, the leading theatre of the world’s leading city—than his work as an author.