Bram Stoker

Most famous for his novel Dracula, Bram Stoker was nonetheless a prolific writer. This new book offers an introduction to the range of his work - novels, short stories, biography and criticism. It provides a discussion of recent scholarship on Stoker including the many attempts to write his life and find the ‘real’ Bram Stoker, and the lurid speculation this provokes. Moving beyond this, the author focuses on Stoker’s career as a late-Victorian and Edwardian novelist in the commercial marketplace, looking at the fictional trends (horror, romance, adventure, crime) which his work encompasses. Andrew Maunder explores Stoker’s bid for fame as a writer, how his novels were received, and their engagement with contemporary anxieties about gender and nationhood. Finally, he examines recent criticism in addition to the ways in which later generations have read Stoker, including the continuing fascination exerted by works like Dracula on writers and film-makers.