The Literary Career of Bram Stoker

The Literary Career of Bram Stoker

Abraham (Bram) Stoker was born November 8, 1847 at 15 The Crescent,

Clontarf, North of Dublin, the third of seven children. For the first 7

years of his life Stoker was bedridden with a myriad of childhood diseases

which afforded him much time to reading. By the time he went to college,

Stoker had somehow overcome his childhood maladies and while at Trinity

College, Dublin, the honor student was involved in soccer and was a

marathon running champion. He was also involved in various literary and

dramatic activities, a precursor to his later interests in the theater and

his involvement with the rising action Henry Irving, whose performance he

had critiqued as a student at Trinity. After graduation from college, and

in his father's footsteps, he became a civil servant, holding the position

of junior clerk in the Dublin Castle.

His literary career began as early as 1871 and in that year he took up a

post as the unpaid drama critic for the "Evening Mail," while at the same

time writing short stories. His first literary "success" came...