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The Lost Journal
A small notebook signed “Abraham Stoker”, preserved among family papers, offered a fresh view of Bram before his best-known novel. Its observations, sketches, poems and story ideas record a writer gathering material from the world around him.
From private papers to readers
The notebook’s emergence was reported in 2011. Edited by Dacre Stoker and Elizabeth Miller, it appeared in 2012 as The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years, marking the centenary of Bram’s death.
Ideas in the making
Early notes can be suggestive without being finished plans. A reader may recognise concerns or images that recur in later fiction, but resemblance alone does not prove that a particular entry was a direct draft for Dracula. The journal is valuable as a record of observation and invention in its own right.
Explore further
Find the edition in the Bibliography. Family objects introduces other material from Bram’s world, while Gibbet Hill tells a different discovery story from an institutional newspaper collection.
Read the handwriting
See the image-by-image reading transcriptions. Missing and uncertain text is marked rather than reconstructed.
Finding the journal
The notebook survived among papers in the family collection and was recognised when a researcher asked about a journal Bram had kept. It was signed “Abraham Stoker”. Its 305 entries range from brief observations and comic ideas to longer passages, offering a view of the young writer trying out material.
Ashley Fantz’s CNN report describes the discovery. One journal entry reads: “I once knew a boy who put so many flies into a bottle that they had not room to die.” The passage is often discussed alongside Renfield, while the notebook also contains ideas associated with Under the Sunset.
