Bram Stoker was born on November 8, 1847, in Clontarf, which is north of Dublin, Ireland. He was the third of seven children in his family. His parents were Dubliner Abraham Stoker, who was a civil servant, and Donegal native Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley, who was a civil servant.
In the early years of his life, particularly in the first seven years, he was a sickly child who often found himself bedridden. From a young age, he would listen to stories that his mother would tell his father, and he wrote ghost stories of his own. He anticipated that he would grow up to be a writer and started getting writing experience early on.
Stoker received his B.A. in 1870 from Trinity College, Dublin, where he was awarded mathematics honors. He then attended Middle Temple in London and was called to the Bar in 1890. He began his career as a civil servant in Dublin from 1867 to 1877.
Throughout his college years, Stoker was friends with fellow Irish writer Oscar Wilde. Wilde previously courted Stoker’s future wife. When Wilde was exiled from Ireland, Stoker even went to visit him in his new home.
From there, he went on to be a drama critic for the “Dublin Mail” from 1871 to 1878 and an editor for “Halfpenny Press” in 1874. He was the manager of the Lyceum Theater and the acting manager for Sir Henry Irving from 1878-1905.
Stoker’s writing career occurred between 1880 and 1912. He is best known for his fiction novel, “Dracula,” but he wrote more than 25 other works and contributed to periodicals. Early critics of “Dracula” said that the events in the novel involved excessive horror, it became one of his most popular works.
On December 4, 1878, Stoker married Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe, with whom he had one child, Noel. Aside from his career success, Stoker was awarded a medal from the Royal Humane Society in 1882 for his efforts to prevent a suicide attempt.
Stoker died of syphilis on April 20, 1912, in London, England. After his death, his widow sued the German filmmakers who made “Nosferatu,” which was the first vampire movie, for replacing Dracula with Nosferatu to copy the rest of Stoker’s work. She won the case in 1925.
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