Abraham or `Bram’ Stoker is best known today for being the author of the classic horror novel Dracula (1897). The story of a vampire struggling to catch victims in his native superstition-ridden Transylvania who relocates to England in search of less wary prey.

However, in his heyday of late Victorian England, Stoker was more famous as the Business Manager and general factotum of the actor Henry Irving at London’s Lyceum Theatre. Stoker held this position for over twenty years and despite a heavy work schedule, which sometimes lasted up to eighteen hours a day, managed to write seventeen books including twelve novels.

Born in Ireland in 1847 Stoker would be eclipsed both in life and in death. Life lost in the shadow of Irving and death in the shadow of Count Dracula. Today he strikes a rather tragic figure who was under appreciated in his time and ignorant, even cheated, of his posthumous literary success.

Stoker deserves to be placed alongside Poe , Le Fanu and Lovecraft in the pantheon of horror fiction.