Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula - by Barbara Belford (Paperback)

About the Book

New in paperback: The story of the mind behind the monster (and the monster within the mind)-a tale of obsession and hero worship in Victorian England

Book Synopsis

"What a splendid subject to sink one's teeth into," raved the Washington Post. Here was a six-foot-two Irishman with a red beard--a Victorian family man, a spirited debater, and the author of novels and short stories largely forgotten today. All, of course, except for Dracula, which has enjoyed countless stage and screen incarnations and haunted the dreams of many generations. Bram Stoker lived at the very center of late-Victorian social and artistic life and numbered among his friends Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Whistler, William Gladstone, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. But it was his relationship with the mesmerizing, domineering actor Henry Irving that may have played the most crucial role in Stoker's life--a real-life monster who ultimately led to Stoker's most famous creation. In this book that the Baltimore Sun called "superb," Barbara Belford draws on unpublished archival material to reveal the links between the reticent author's life, his vampire tale, and the political, occult, cultural, and sexual background of the 1890s.

About the Author

Barbara Belford has written several biographies on Victorian literary figures, including Violet Hunt and Oscar Wilde. A professor emeritus at Columbia University, she lives in New York City.