Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 - 20 April 1912) was an Anglo-Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel, Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned. Although an invalid in early childhood-he could not stand or walk until he was seven-Stoker outgrew his weakness to become an outstanding athlete and football (soccer) player at Trinity College (1864-70) in Dublin, where he earned a degree in mathematics.
After 10 years in the civil service at Dublin Castle, during which he was also an unpaid drama critic for the Dublin Evening Mail (later the Evening Mail), he made the acquaintance of his idol, the actor Sir Henry Irving, and, from 1878 until Irving's death 27 years later, Stoker acted as Irving's manager, writing as many as 50 letters a day for him and accompanying him on his American tours. Stoker's first book, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, a handbook in legal administration, was published in 1879. A fan of the Romantic Movement in literature, Stoker corresponded with Walt Whitman and was a friend of Oscar Wilde. A dull life in civil service provided the inspiration necessary to produce such master works as the classic horror tale 'Dracula' (1897) and numerous collections of horror short stories.
Stoker's interest in the supernatural and the occult - which would become a salient focus for his later fiction - may have been rooted in his unidentified childhood illness, which supposedly kept him bed-ridden until the age of seven; this seclusion would be compounded by an interest in Irish folklore, which often concerned tales of bogeys and vampires. In fact, Stoker's later interests included "Egyptology, Babylonian lore, astral projections, and alchemy", and he was rumored to be a member of the infamous Order of the Golden Dawn, an esoteric circle of magicians attended by W.B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley; however, today such rumors are largely viewed as apocryphal.
