Bram Stoker And The Man Who Was Dracula [Paperback]

Barbara Belford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2002

"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 In this book that the Baltimore Sun called "superb," Barbara Belford draws on unpublished archival material to reveal the links between the reticent author's life, his vampire tale, and the political, occult, cultural, and sexual background of the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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Belford achieved a goal Count Dracula appreciates. She has restored Bram Stoker to life." -- -St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Intelligent, well-written and always interesting... showcasing some of the most fascinating characters ever to gather on the same stage." -- -New York Times Book Review

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (February 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306810980
• ISBN-13: 978-0306810985
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,099,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A biography of Bram Stoker and Henry Irving, March 27, 2005

By 

Geert Daelemans (Leuven Belgium) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bram Stoker And The Man Who Was Dracula (Paperback)

If you open a copy of Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula you can see that the title page mentions a completely different title: Bram Stoker - A Biography of the Author of Dracula. To my opinion this title is much more relevant to the content of the book.

Indeed Barbara Belford draws an interesting picture of the person behind that gothic masterpiece Dracula. Like most biographies its starts with a description the parents and the youth of Bram Stoker, but then quickly puts the focus on the period when he actually wrote Dracula. At that time Bram was the assistant to the famous actor Henry Irving and hardly got out of the shadows of that self-centred man. According to the author Bram's obsession with the actor drove him to create the character of Count Dracula. This truly is an interesting thesis, but Barbara never really succeeds in getting convincing evidence on the table. A lot of her reasoning depends on heavily circumstantial evidence and assumptions on the personality of a man's life that was minimally documented. The fact that Barbara uses this link as a golden thread through the book becomes by times a bit tedious.

Apart from this flaw, this biography truly gives the reader a better understanding of the person of Bram Stoker, and Henry Irving for that matter. But it goes further than that: it paints a comprehensive picture of late-Victorian social and artistic life, dominated by an unstoppable drive for change and progress. On the brink of the new 20th Century, Bram Stoker is clearly a child of its time. Not surprising that his circle of friends include Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Barbara is well aware of this impact and drapes this subtly though her story.

Not a lot has been written on the life of Bram Stoker, but this book certainly helps fill in this gap.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, April 25, 2011

By 

Cheryl A. Hamilton (Guthrie, OK United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bram Stoker And The Man Who Was Dracula (Paperback)

I think the author inserted a little too much of her personal interpretations, but still it was an interesting read.