Introduction: Reading Beyond Dracula 1 Hall Caine, 'Bram Stoker
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Introduction: Reading beyond Dracula 1 Hall Caine, 'Bram Stoker. The Story of a Great Friendship', The Daily Telegraph, 24 April 1912, p. 16. 2 'Death of Mr. Bram Stoker. Sir H. Irving's Manager', The Daily Telegraph, 22 April 1912, p. 6; Caine, 'Bram Stoker', p. 16; 'Obituary. Mr. Bram Stoker', The Times, 22 April 1912, p. 15. A fldus Achates is a faithful companion or bosom friend, the allusion being to Virgil's Aeneid. The term is used to describe Bram Stoker by The Times and recurs in a further obituary: 'Bram Stoker', The New York Times, 23 April 1912, p. 12. 3 Caine, 'Bram Stoker', p. 16. 4 'Merry-go-Round', The Entr'acte, 23 September 1882, p. 4. 5 Bram Stoker, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, 2 vols (London: William Heinemann, 1906) Vol. 1, p. ix (Hereafter PRHI). 6 Caine, 'Bram Stoker', p. 16. 7 Stoker records an eclectic selection of guests at Lyceum First Nights in the first volume of his biography of Irving. The list, which is arranged through out in two columns, occupies an astonishing eleven single-spaced pages. Though a few women - most notably Genevieve Ward, Lady Gregory, Sarah Bernhardt and the Baroness Burdett-Coutts - feature in their own right, the majority are listed merely as the partners of their distinguished husbands (PRHI I 315-26). For information on the masculine culture of London in the period see Pamela Horn, High Society: The English Social Elite 1880-1914 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992) pp. 24-9, 147-51. 8 Maurice Richardson, 'The Psychoanalysis of Ghost Stories', The Twentieth Century 166 (1959) 419-31 at p. 427; Joseph Bierman, 'A Crucial Stage in the Writing of Dracula', William Hughes and Andrew Smith, eds, Bram Stoker: History, Psychoanalysis and the Gothic (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998) pp. 151-72 at p. 169. 9 Joseph Bierman, 'Dracula: Prolonged Childhood Illness, and the Oral Triad', American Imago 29 (1972) 186-98; Richardson, 'The Psychoanalysis of Ghost Stories', p. 429; Daniel Lapin, The Vampire, Dracula and Incest (San Francisco: Gargoyle, 1995) p. 31. 10 Phyllis Roth, Bram Stoker (Boston: Twayne, 1982) p. 23; Daniel Farson, The Man Who Wrote Dracula (London: Michael Joseph, 1975) pp. 233-5; cf. David Skal, V is for Vampire (London: Robson, 1996) p. 186. For an oppos ing viewpoint, based on a reading of recent and nineteenth-century medical textbooks, see Peter Haining and Peter Tremayne, The Un-Dead (London: Constable, 1997) pp. 179-82. 11 Skal, V is for Vampire p. 183; Talia Shaffer, '"A Wilde Desire Took Me": The Homoerotic History of Dracula', English Literary History 61/2 (1994) 381-425 at p. 397. 12 Daniel Farson, 'The Sexual Torment of the Man who Created Dracula', The 180 Notes 181 Mail on Sunday, 3 January 1993, pp. 35, 43. 13 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (London: Penguin, 1984) pp. 6-7. 14 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 33. 15 Daniel Pick, '"Terrors of the Night": Dracula and "Degeneration" in the Late Nineteenth Century', Critical Quarterly 30 (1989) 71-87; Ernest Fontana, 'Lombroso's Criminal Man and Stoker's Dracula', Victorian Newsletter 66 (1984) 25-7; Victor Sage, Horror Fiction in the Protestant Tradition (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988) pp. 180-5; Kellie Donovan Wixson, 'Dracula: An Anglo-Irish Gothic Novel', Elizabeth Miller, ed., Dracula: The Shade and the Shadow (Westcliff-on-Sea: Desert Island Books, 1998) pp. 247-56; Colin Graham, 'A Late Politics of Irish Gothic: Bram Stoker's The Lady of the Shroud', Bruce Stewart, ed.; That Other World (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smyth, 1998) 2 vols, Vol. 2, pp. 30-9. 16 Matthew Brennan, 'Repression, Knowledge and Saving Souls: The Role of the "New Woman" in Stoker's Dracula and Murnau's Nosferatu', Studies in the Humanities 19 (1992) 1-10; Carol A. Senf, 'Dracula: Stoker's Response to the New Woman', Victorian Studies 26 (1982) 33-49; David B. Dickens, 'The German Matrix of Stoker's Dracula', and Diane Milburn, '"For the Dead Travel Fast": Dracula in Anglo-German Context', in Miller, ed., Dracula: The Shade and the Shadow, pp. 31-41 and pp. 41-53, respectively. 17 Though Barbara Belford's biography Bram Stoker (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996) was the major focus of public attention during 1997, The Un-Dead (1997) by Peter Haining and Peter Tremayne presents considerably more detailed information on the movement, education and relationships of the Stoker family. See also Leslie Shepard, 'The Library of Bram Stoker', The Bram Stoker Society Journal 4 (1992) 28-34. 18 See, for example, J. Gordon Melton, 'Stoker, Abraham "Bram"', The Vampire Book (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1994) pp. 583-7 at p. 584; Clive Leatherdale, Dracula: The Novel and the Legend (Brighton: Desert Island Books, 1993) p. 74. 19 David Glover, Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996). 20 Literally, 'Who today does not know Dracula? Who knows its author, Bram Stoker?' Alain Garsault, 'Pozzuoli (Alain): Bram Stoker: Prince des Tenebres', Positif, 353 (1990) 128. 21 The phrase is David Glover's, though Barbara Belford expresses similar sentiments in the introduction to her 1996 biography. See Glover, Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals, p. 1; Belford, Bram Stoker, p. xi. 22 Harry Ludlam, A Biography of Dracula (London: Foulsham, 1962) p. 11. 23 Charlotte Stoker was the author of two minor published works, one consid ering female emigration from the workhouse, the other on the education of the deaf and dumb. See Haining and Tremayne, The Un-Dead, p. 46. 24 Stoker may also have been educated by a Mr Moore, according to the details published in the author's record as a member of the University's First Fifteen in the period 1869-70. See Dublin University Football Club 1854-1954, published on behalf of the Committee of Dublin University Football Club (Dublin: Montford Publications, 1954) p. 50. 25 I would like to express my gratitude to Dermot J.M. Sherlock, Recorder of 182 Beyond Dracula Alumni at Trinity College Dublin, for granting me access to information on Stoker contained in the Muniment Records and Catalogue of Graduates of the University of Dublin. 26 See Farson, The Man Who Wrote Dracula, p. 18. 27 The Historical Society granted honorary membership to 'The Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin; the Members of the Oxford Union; Members of the Cambridge Union; the Members of the Speculative Society, Edinburgh.' Bram Stoker was one of two candidates sharing the Society's silver medal for History in 1870, and was awarded a silver medal for Composition in his own right in the same year. Appendix to the College Historical Society Address, 1872 [National Library of Ireland P1399(20)] pp. 37, 40, 41. 28 Dowden, the author of author of Shakspere: His Mind and Art (1875), was Professor of Oratory and English Literature at the University of Dublin and, as a champion of Walt Whitman's verse, reputedly became a role model for the young Stoker. J.P. Mahaffy - whose influence on Oscar Wilde is recalled in Oliver St John Gogarty's 1950 autobiography Intimations (London: Sphere, 1985) pp. 32-4 - was a noted Classical historian who later trans ferred his attention from Greece to Egyptian papyri. 29 Dublin Philosophical Society Minutes, Fourteenth Session, dated 11 June 1868, preserved by the Philosophical Society, Trinity College Dublin. 30 Dublin Philosophical Society Minutes: Fifteenth Session (Shelley); Sixteenth Session (Composition); Seventeenth Session (Style and Rossetti). These papers have not survived, though Stoker's The Necessity for Political Honesty was published in 1872 by the Historical Society in a limited - and now scarce - edition. Stoker's 'Second Certificate in Oratory', as it was titled, was awarded by the Philosophical Society on 25 November 1869, the Vice Chancellor of Ireland being the Chair for the opening of the Sixteenth Session. 31 Appendix to the College Historical Society Address 1870 [National Library of Ireland P1399(20)], pp. 53, 54, 56. 32 Bram Stoker, 'The Censorship of Fiction', The Nineteenth Century and After, 66 (1909) 974-89; Appendix to the College Historical Society Address 1870 [National Library of Ireland P1399(20)]; p. 51. 33 Standish O'Grady was an active member of both Societies and was awarded the President's Medal for Composition by the Philosophical Society on 26 November 1868 (Dublin Philosophical Society Minutes: Fifteenth Session). William Wilde was elected to the Philosophical Society on 10 February 1870, and delivered an address laconically entitled 'Moliere' on 26 November 1870 (Dublin Philosophical Society Minutes: Seventeenth Session). Stoker seconded the election of Todhunter as an Honorary Member of 'The Phil' on 9 February 1871 (Dublin Philosophical Society Minutes: Seventeenth Session). 34 Haining and Tremayne, The Un-Dead, pp. 88, 91. 35 Haining and Tremayne, The Un-Dead, pp. 62-3; Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987) p. 99. 36 WJ. McCormack, 'Irish Gothic and After, 1820-1945', Seamus Deane, ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Londonderry: Field Day Publications, 1991) pp. 842-6 at p. 845. 37 Stoker's first recorded publication, 'The Crystal Cup', was printed in London Notes 183 Society in 1872. Another short story, 'Jack Hammon's Vote', now lost, was rejected in turn by The Cornhill Magazine, Macmillan's Magazine, Temple Bar, and Blackwood's as a letter from Stoker, dated 6 October 1874 and now held at the National Library of Scotland, notes (MS4325 f. 240). The author returned to print with three serial novellas - 'The Primrose Path', 'Buried Treasures' and 'The Chain of Destiny' - all published in The Shamrock, an Irish journal, in 1875. Stoker's subsequent short fiction was published either in anthologies or in journals originating in England or the United States.