Notes Introduction 1. The new series was called the Acme Library Series and the first novel pub- lished in the series was Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Parasite in 1894. 2. See Hughes (2000). Glover’s (1996) and Hughes’s monographs were instru- mental in the development of Stokerian criticism at this period. Hughes and Smith’s collection of essays on Stoker, Bram Stoker: History, Psychoanalysis and the Gothic (1998), was also published in this period. 3. For sexual and gender readings, see, for instance, Roth (1997), Craft (1984) and Cranny-Francis (1988). On the colonial resonances of Dracula, see Arata (1990). For a study of the vampire figure, see Frayling (1991), Senf (1988) and Auerbach (1995). 4. See, for instance, Moses (1997). 5. Tóibín, however, describes Irving as ‘tyrannical’, but the relationship between Irving and Stoker was complex and should not be interpreted as one of tyranny and subjugation. 6. See Hopkins (2007), Wynne (2006, 2011, 2012) and Hoeveler (2012). Daly connected the Irish playwright Dion Boucicault to Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass (1995, 1999). 7. For instance, there are only fleeting references to Stoker in Foulkes’s excel- lent collection of essays on Henry Irving (2008). 8. Peter Haining and Peter Tremayne argue that between 1870 and 1876 the Wildes ‘acted in loco parentis to Bram and undoubtedly had an influence imparting information on Irish folklore to him’ (1997: 68). 9. In an unpublished letter to Stoker written from Paris and dated 24 July 1875, Ward asks Stoker to convey her love to the Wildes and describes how her mother has planted the ivy which they brought from the Wilde garden (Stoker Correspondence). 10. See Wynne (2012, vol. 1: xvii–xix). 11. This point is corroborated by Stoker’s unpublished correspondence. See, for example, letters to Stoker from Adeline Billington, Fanny Davenport and V. B. Dillon (Stoker Correspondence). With thanks to Chris Sheppard and staff in Special Collections for access to this material. 12. Certainly, Stoker’s unpublished theatrical correspondence in the Brotherton Library, Special Collections, University of Leeds reveals the difficulties in managing relationships at the Lyceum. For instance, Stoker had, at times, an awkward relationship with the Lyceum actor William Terriss. In a series of letters to Stoker in 1893, Terriss complains that he was underpaid for an American tour. In a letter dated 13 October, the actor is furious that Stoker brought the matter to Irving’s attention. Letters from Tennyson’s son, Hallam, reveal the problems Stoker also encountered in liaising between the Lyceum actors and Tennyson, whose two plays, The Cup and Becket, were performed by Irving at the Lyceum in 1888 and 1893 respectively. In a letter 171 172 Notes dated 18 August 1892, Hallam, acting on behalf of his father, informs Stoker that Terriss and the Lyceum actress Jessie Millward failed to show up for lunch with the poet. But Stoker is also the subject of some of the Tennysons’ dissatisfaction. In letters from the 1880s Hallam chastises Stoker for his dila- tory responses to his queries (Stoker Correspondence, 10 May 1882; June 1883) and reveals the poet’s impatience with Irving. This correspondence also shows how Stoker, as acting manager, functions as a buffer for Irving. 13. See Auerbach (1990: 78–80) and Belford (1997, passim). 14. For a more detailed reading of the story, see Wynne (2011: 19). 15. See Roth (1997: 420). 1 Stoker, Melodrama and the Gothic 1. In Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture, Terry Eagleton dis- cusses the lack of a realist tradition in nineteenth-century Irish fiction. The social conditions were too disruptive and disrupted to produce an adequately realist text as the ‘genre depends on settlement and stability, gathering indi- vidual lives into an integrated whole’ (1995: 147). 2. See, for instance, Richelieu, The Dead Heart, Robespierre and Madame Sans Gêne. For a reading of these productions, see Richards (2005: 353–417). 3. For a full discussion of vampire melodramas, see Frayling (1991: 131–44). See Luke Gibbons for a political discussion of the ‘facility with which depictions of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands […] lent themselves to some of the earliest forays into the Gothic’ (2004: 20). 4. For further discussion of these associations, see Rarignac (2012: 50–4). 5. The opening of Planché’s play also recalls ‘Dracula’s Guest’, published as a short story in 1914, and functioning as a preface to Dracula. Here the narrator, an unnamed Jonathan Harker, visits an abandoned German village associated with vampires on Walpurgis Night. Taking refuge from the storm in the tomb of a suicide, the Countess of Styria – Stoker’s tribute to J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire Carmilla (1872) – he sees a vision of the corpse arising from its tomb, until he feels himself clasped and pulled away by a strange force and then shielded by a wolf which lies on his body. Soldiers come to rescue him. Later when he queries how his rescue has come about he is presented with a letter from Dracula prom- ising to reward Harker’s hosts if his safety is ensured. Like Margaret at the tomb of Cromal, supernatural intervention ensures his safety, but unlike the vampire play, his safety is only temporary. In Dracula Harker is rescued again by Dracula, this time from the clutches of the vampire women. 6. For an examination of other Irish plays performed in Dublin during Stoker’s tenure as reviewer, see Wynne (2012, vol. 1: xxi–xxiii). 7. Deirdre McFeely’s Dion Boucicault: Irish Identity on Stage (2012) examines the contemporary reception of Boucicault’s Irish plays in Dublin, London and New York. 8. For a discussion of how the novel was thematically similar to other plays that Stoker saw at the Theatre Royal and the broader political context, see Wynne (2012, vol. 1: xix–xxiv). 9. For a fuller discussion of this, see Wynne (2012, vol. 1: xxii–xxiii and vol. 2: 85–7). Notes 173 10. See [Greville Cole] Theatre Programmes, 1849–1906, National Library of Ireland, Dublin. 11. Adaptations of sensation novels which appeared on the Dublin stage in the 1870s included: Collins’s The Woman in White (April 1872) and The New Magdalen (December 1874); and Mrs Henry Wood’s East Lynne (October 1874). One of J. L. Toole’s regular pieces was an adaptation of Oliver Twist (November 1873). Jennie Lee cross-dressed to perform in Jo, the crossing- sweeper of Bleak House. The role made her famous on the international stage. For reviews of the various adaptations performed in Dublin in the 1870s, see Wynne (2012, vol. 1: passim). 12. Stoker first saw Irving on stage in Dublin with Louisa Herbert’s company. Herbert was a beautiful actress who modelled for the Pre-Raphaelites. See Wynne (2012, vol. 2: 1, 5 n.). 13. For an account of the murder, see Rowell (1987). 14. It is clear that Stoker was thinking about the difficulties involved in adapting novels for the stage for some time. In a review of 30 April 1872 of Collins’s stage adaptation of The Woman in White he ponders: ‘In dramatising a novel there are many advantages, but many difficulties. The same knowledge which the audience is supposed to have of the characters and the plot of the novel tends to make them hypercritical, and to look for the reproduction of every minute incident. They seem to forget often that many things can be told and many descriptions perfected in words which could not possibly be represented upon the stage. Mystery is tolerable in a novel, but fatal on the stage; and whereas in the latter it is perfectly good art to show fully the development of a plot, it is wrong to conceal any of its working to an audi- ence. Mr. Wilkie Collins, in dramatising The Woman in White, saw all these difficulties and grappled with them in a masterly manner’ (Wynne, 2012, vol. 1: 29). 2 Irving’s Tempters and Stoker’s Vanishing Ladies 1. Henri Garenne describes how to recreate the trick: ‘Provide a wooden cabinet, about five feet in height, standing upon four short legs, and by about five feet in length by four feet in depth. Inside have a number of small hooks, upon which hang sundry musical instruments, a drum, tambourine, guitar, a bell, and anything the performer fancies. In the door of the cabinet towards the top, have a hole cut out, through which can be seen and heard the various manifestations. The performer takes care to have all the instruments smeared with some luminous liquid, so that the instruments can be seen by him when shut up in the cabinet. Having been tied up, and the doors of the cabinet being closed, the lights are turned down and the performer immediately releases his hands, takes off his coat and vest, and slipping his hands again into the loops calls for “light,” when the door of the cabinet is opened and he is seen without his coat or vest. The doors being again closed, he releases his hands again and commences making a noise, first with one and then with another of the various instruments. Replacing his hands in the loops, he calls again for “light,” and when the doors are opened he is still seen bound securely’ (1886: 290–1). 174 Notes 2. For a comprehensive study of the phenomenon of Trilby and its cultural context, see Pick (2000). 3. See also Terry (1908: 241). 4. The Strand Magazine of March 1901 features an article on Britain’s most popu- lar pictures and lists two of Doré’s paintings, Christ Leaving the Praetorium and The Vale of Tears.