Abraham (Bram) Stoker was and Irish writer, best known as the author of the Gothic horror tale Dracula. He was born in November 8, 1847 in Dublin. His father was a civil servant and his mother was a charity worker and writer. Stoker was a sickly child and spent a lot of time in bed. In 1864 Stoker entered Trinity College Dublin. While attending college he began working as an Irish civil servant. He also worked part time as a freelance journalist and drama critic. In 1876 he met Henry Irving, a famous actor, and they soon became friends. Not long after that, Stoker met and fell in love with an aspiring actress named Florence Balcombe. In 1878 Stoker accepted a job working in London as Irving’s personal secretary. On December that year, Stoker and his new wife moved to England to join Irving. His first book The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland though written while he was still in Dublin, was published in 1879. Turning to fiction late in life, Stoker published his first novel, The Snake’s Pass, a romantic thriller with a bleak western Ireland setting, in 1890. His masterpiece, Dracula, appeared in 1897. While in England Stoker also wrote several novels and short stories. Two years after Stoker’s death, his widow, Florence Stoker, published as part of a posthumous collection of short stories Dracula’s Guest, which, most contemporary scholars believe, text editors had excised from the original Dracula manuscript. Although best known for “Dracula”, Stoker wrote eighteen books before his death in 1912. He died of exhaustion at the age of 64.
