THE WORLD OF BRAM STOKER AND DRACULA
005
1847Abraham Stoker is born on November 8 in Dublin to Charlotte and Abraham Stoker. Nursed by his uncle William through a lengthy childhood illness, Bram is repeatedly bled to improve his condition. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are published.
1848Revolutions take place in Paris, Vienna, Milan, Rome, and Venice.
1849Bram’s brother Tom is born. Edgar Allan Poe dies.
1854Bram’s brother George is born. Bram walks unaided for the first time. His illness ends and does not return for the rest of his relatively healthy life. Britain and France declare war on Russia. Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is published. Oscar Wilde is born.
1855Charlotte Brontë dies. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published.
1856Sigmund Freud is born.
1859Stoker enters preparatory school, where he will study until 1863. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities are published. Arthur Conan Doyle is born.
1863Stoker enters Trinity College in Dublin, where he studies science and mathematics, and plays competitive sports.
1865The American Civil War ends. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is published. William Butler Yeats is born.
1867Stoker attends a performance of Richard Sheridan’s The Rivals, starring Henry Irving, at the Theatre Royal in Dublin.
1868After graduating with honors and an M.A. degree in mathematics from Trinity College, Stoker enters the civil service at Dublin Castle.
1871Stoker’s first theater review for the Dublin Evening Mail is published anonymously. Bram’s mother, father, and two sisters move to the continent. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and the first installment of George Eliot’s Middlemarch are published.
1872Stoker delivers an address entitled “The Necessity for Political Honesty”; later published, it is Stoker’s first signed work.
1874Stoker visits Paris. Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is published.
1875Three stories by Stoker appear in the weekly publication The Shamrock.
1876Stoker’s father dies in Naples. Stoker meets the actor Henry Irving and is greatly moved by Irving’s reading of the poem “The Dream of Eugene Aram.”
1877Stoker resigns from his position as drama critic to write a book for the clerks of the petty sessions.
1878Stoker marries Florence Balcombe and becomes business manager of Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theatre.
1879Stoker’s first book, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, is published.
1882Stoker is awarded the Bronze Medal from the Royal Humane Society for endeavoring to prevent a suicide. Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are born. Charles Darwin dies.
1886Stoker studies law, and publishes an essay on the United States entitled “A Glimpse of America.”
1888Jack the Ripper causes fear to spread through London. T. S. Eliot is born.
1890Stoker begins to write Dracula. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is published.
1892Walt Whitman dies.
1895Oscar Wilde is jailed for homosexual offenses. H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine is published.
1897Dracula is published. Soon after, the story is enacted on the Lyceum stage.
1898Miss Betty is published and then produced onstage.
1900Oscar Wilde dies.
1901Bram’s mother and Queen Victoria die.
1902The Mystery of the Sea and The Jewel of Seven Stars are published. The Lyceum Theatre is closed.
1904Irving’s company conducts its final tour of the United States.
1905The Man is published. Henry Irving collapses and dies.
1906Stoker has his first stroke. Samuel Beckett is born.
1910Stoker has a second stroke.
1911The Lair of the White Worm, Stoker’s final novel, is published.
1912Bram Stoker dies, on April 20.
1914A group of stories chosen by Stoker and edited by his wife appears as Dracula’s Guest.