‘Dracula’s’ first inception - Irish author, Bram Stoker’s terrifying thoughts unearthed - VIDEO

Dublin author Bram Stoker’s private diary turns up on the Isle of Wright

By

KERRY O'SHEA,

IrishCentral Intern

Larger Text

Print

E-mail

5 Comments

Bela Lugosi as 'Dracula'

Photo by Google Images

Tweet

The private journal of Bram Stoker, Irish author of the classic ‘Dracula,’ was discovered in his great-grandson Noel Dobbs’ bookshelf in England. The journal contains 305 of Stoker’s own entries, varying in length.

“When I saw it, I was amazed. 'I thought, 'The Holy Grail! We've found it!,” said  Professor Dacre Stoker of the discovery in his cousin’s home.

The journal would have gone unnoticed, reports The Daily Mail, had an American researcher not contacted Dobbs looking for it. The thin journal was found on Dobbs’ bookshelf, unmarked, save for the name “Abraham Stoker” written on it.

Dobbs forwarded some photocopies of the journal to his cousin Dacre Stoker, a professor in South Carolina. Stoker used the photocopies to create a book detailing the more personal side of Bram Stoker’s life.
_______________
Read More:
Dracula, banshees and Jack o' Lantern - top ten Irish Halloween scary spirits - PHOTOS

Top ten scariest Irish horror movies to celebrate Halloween - VIDEOS

New statue to celebrate king of vampires - Bram Stoker
_______________

He noted how his cousin Dobbs remained “blase” about the discovery. Dacre Stoker’s book, “The Lost Journal”, will be published in March to commemorate the 100 years since the passing of Bram Stoker.

Dacre Stoker worked with other Bram Stoker scholars to annotate the journal which Stoker began keeping in 1871 when he was in his early twenties. He would continue the journal for a decade, with one of his last entries hinting at his now famous Count Dracula character. It wasn’t until 1881 that Stoker first learned about ‘Vlad the Impaler,’ the major source of inspiration for his Count Dracula.

Bram Stoker died in 1912, about twenty years before Dracula was made into an internationally popular film starring Bela Lugosi in the 1930s.

In his diary, Stoker apparently alludes to there being another diary somewhere, though no one seems to know the whereabouts of it. “There's something else out there - that missing piece, this mystery diary,” Dacre Stoker said. “I'm dying to know where it is.”

Bram Stoker was born in Clontarf, north of Dublin and studied mathematics at Trinity College.

Before writing “Dracula” in 1897 he spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires. “Dracula” is an epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic, but completely fictional, diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to his story.

Below, watch the 1931 trailer for the film adaptation of Stoker’s “Dracula,” starring Bela Lugosi:

Print

E-mail

Tweet