Bram Stoker report

Bram Stoker report

Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland on November 8th, 1847. His father

was a civil servant in Dublin Castle, and his mother, Charlotte, was a women’s lib

advocate. They had seven children in nine years; the third of which was Bram. The

first seven years of his life he was bedridden with an undiagnosed disease which

may have been anything from rheumatic fever, asthma or a form of nonparalytic

polio. During these first years of his life as he laid in his bed he listened to stories

his mother told him of the cholera epidemic of 1832; people buried alive, and

entire families dying in a matter of days.

At the age of 12 Bram left his home to attend school at Dublin’s Rutland

Square under Reverend William Wood. During these years he made up for his

childhood sickness by becoming involved in athletics and became an endurance

walker.

Following his older brothers lead in 1863, at the age of 17, he entered

Trinity College in Dublin. Only ten years after he took his first steps he was now

six foot two and 175 pounds. He joined several clubs and groups; he became

president of the Philosophical Society, auditor of the Historical Society, he played

soccer, was unbeatable in his walking marathons, and after two years he became

the athletics champion of Trinity. In 1866 Bram took a one year leave of absence

from Trinity to work as a clerk in the Registrar of Petty Sessions at Dublin Castle.

Later in the year he saw the play The Rivals playing the lead, Captain Absolute,

was the British actor Henry Irving, a person who would play a major role in

Bram’s life. He was so impressed by Irving’s performance he wrote:

“What I saw, to my amazement and delight , was a patrician figure as

real as the person of one’s dreams, and endowed with the same poetic

grace. A young soldier, handsome, distinguished, self-dependent;

compact of grace and slumberous energy. A man of quality who stood

out from his surroundings on the stage as a being of another social

world. A figure full of dash and fine irony, and whose ridicule

seemed to bite; buoyant with the joy of life; self-conscious; an

offensive egoist envy in his love-making; of supreme and

unsurpassable insolence, veiled and shrouded in his fine quality of

manner.”

He returned to Trinity after his absence and graduated in 1871 with a degree

in science, he then stayed on...

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In the last year of his life Stoker suffered from a number of illnesses from:

Bright’s Disease (a painful kidney disease), gout, syphilis, and exhaustion. On

April 15th, 1912 Florence Stoker rushed to her husbands bedroom to tell him that

the luxury liner Titanic had sunk the night before. Five days later April 20th, the

day the investigation into the Titanic disaster began, Bram Stoker died at the age

of 64. His death certificate listed three causes of death: Locomotor Ataxy (tertiary

syphilis), Granular Contracted Kidney (Bright’s Disease), and exhaustion.

The story of Dracula has been played out many times over in Hollywood

with the most famous being; Nosferatu (1928), Dracula (1931) starring Bela

Lugosi, Count Dracula (1971) starring Christopher Lee, and Bram Stoker’s

Dracula (1992) starring Gary Oldman. It was first a Broadway stage play in the

late 1920’s. It’s leading actor, Bela Lugosi, would go on to play the original

Dracula and play the part in over 80 other horror movies.

Dracula still remains the one work Bram Stoker is remembered for and

today, over 100 years after it was published, it remains one of the most popular

books of all time.