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Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula
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Barbara Belford |
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| Realease Date |
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1996 |
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10.00 with 1 Vote
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Amazon.com |
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"I am here to do Your bidding, Master. I am Your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful." These words spoken by Renfield to Dracula might have been said by Bram Stoker to his boss, the mesmerizing, domineering actor Henry Irving. Stoker was such a mild-mannered, secretive man that the real subject of this acclaimed biography turns out to be the genesis of his novel Dracula, and Irving--the man who, according to Barbara Belford, inspired its famous monster. Other fascinating characters who appear in Stoker's life are Florence Stoker (courted by Oscar Wilde before Bram married her), Ellen Terry (Irving's leading lady), Walt Whitman, the aging Lord Tennyson, W. S. Gilbert, William Gladstone, Lady Speranza Wilde, her son Oscar, Queen Victoria (who knights Irving, the first actor so honored), George Bernard Shaw, and Mark Twain. As Margot Peters writes in the New York Times Book Review, "Stoker himself is pretty much swamped in these heavy seas. But as Ms. Belford's intelligent, well-written and always interesting book makes clear, Stoker lived to serve. His revenge for lifelong self-effacement was Dracula." |
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From Publishers Weekly |
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Bram Stoker's son claimed that the plot of Dracula (1897) came to his father "in a nightmarish dream after eating too much dressed crab." Despite some melodramatic prose, that comment is as exciting as this biography of Stoker (1847-1912) gets. How a boring Victorian Dubliner could have produced the creepiest horror novel of his time remains one of the mysteries of fictional creativity. Belford, biographer of Violet Hunt, has struggled with the problem and sees in Stoker's mesmerizing employer, actor-impresario Henry Irving, the sinister reflection of Vlad the Impaler, but the part-time author, who was the business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, remains bloodless. A tempestuous inner life, fired by sexual frustration (although Stoker was married to an Irish beauty) and omnivorous reading in lurid subliterature, is as close to a solution as we get here. Since Stoker's routine, whether Irving's company traveled or stayed put, was prosaic, Belford often segues to his London acquaintances or his restaurant menus, and sights foreshadowings of Dracula far and near. For those who have been frozen in their armchairs by the spell of Stoker's unforgettable vampire, or who are riveted by its hardly hidden sexual pathology, Stoker's life will be an anticlimax. Illustrations.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. |
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From Library Journal |
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Belford (Brilliant Bylines, Columbia Univ., 1986) has written an enlightening portrait of a man who spent his life in the shadows. Stoker devoted most of his life (1847-1912) to the theater, specifically the Lyceum in London, as the manager of the demanding but enormously successful stage actor Henry Irving. Belford uses unpublished archival material from Britain and the United States to construct the Gothic writer's life and the influences that resulted in his creation of the infamous vampire, Dracula. Of special interest is the symbiotic relationship between Stoker and Irving as manifested in the novel by Dracula's mesmerizing of Jonathan Harker, indicative of Irving's complete control over Stoker's life. Valuable as both a biography of Stoker and a study of late 19th-century British theater, Belford's book provides interesting glimpses into the lives of playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde and their business and personal relationships with Stoker. Recommended for public libraries.?Jacqueline Garlesky, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. |
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From Booklist |
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As Belford depicts him in this fine biography, Bram Stoker was a charming but self-effacing figure overshadowed in his lifetime by his flamboyant employer, larger-than-life actor Henry Irving, then overshadowed after death by his greatest creation, Dracula. Indeed, the beauty of Belford's fine work is that it gives us the marvelous full portrait of a man used to yielding the spotlight to other men. During the course of this vivid, painstakingly researched book, we get to know intimately two Stokers: the efficient, detail-oriented theater manager, as responsible for the remarkable success of London's famed Lyceum Theatre as Irving, its star, and the secret man of letters who in his youth obsessively loved Whitman's then controversial Leaves of Grass but didn't start writing seriously until his late 30s and then produced mostly potboilers. Only Dracula was written with the devotion and care that make a masterpiece--a fact that clearly fascinates Belford, who weaves tightly into a chronological biography a scholarly yet still immensely readable second book, an examination of Stoker's sources and inspirations that will especially gratify those who regard Dracula as more than just a yarn about vampires. Jack Helbig |
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From Kirkus Reviews |
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A very, well, anemic account of the life of the man who wrote the ultimate vampire tale, from the biographer of Edwardian novelist Violet Hunt (1990). The thinness of this biography isn't totally Belford's fault: Bram Stoker cast himself in a supporting role to the innovative actor Henry Irving. Stoker, a tall, genial, redheaded Irishman (he married the woman who was Oscar Wilde's first love), served with great flair and efficiency as the actor's manager at the Lyceum Theatre. He venerated Irving, and the sorrow of his life was the egocentric actor's failure to acknowledge Stoker's role in his success. But the dearth of primary documentation about Stoker--even his journals seem to record Irving's doings more than his own-- force Belford to strain to work her subject into a narrative that centers heavily on Irving, his leading lady, Ellen Terry, and the theatrical life of the era. Belford ends up reading the author's life as a gloss on his one lasting work of fiction, dully tracing every element of the tale to some fact of Stoker's life: The great white mane of Stoker's other idol, Walt Whitman, becomes the white hair of Dracula; the safe where Stoker stored the Lyceum's financial records becomes the safe where Mina's typescript is locked away; Dracula himself is Irving, who sucked the life out of his ``servant'' with no recompense. Yet aside from Stoker's penchant for the occult and doppelgangers (the latter shared with his friend Mark Twain), the true sources of the novel in his creativity and emotions remain obscure. As for Dracula itself, it remains a conundrum of violation, rapacious desire, and death under the cloak of Victorian civility. It mirrors the fundamental conundrum of Stoker's life, as posed by a journalist of his time: How could this ``great shambling, good-natured overgrown boy'' have been the author of Dracula? Belford doesn't manage an answer. (87 photos and illustrations) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. |
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Ingram |
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A full-scale profile of Bram Stoker journeys beyond the facade of a proper Victorian gentleman to uncover the complex undercurrents that are revealed in the turbulent themes of the author's stories and novels, including sexuality, violence, and a fascination with death. |
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From the Back Cover |
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"Barbara Belford's historically meticulous, psychologically shrewd life of Bram Stoker goes beyond biography. Her rich and detailed picture of the world of the late Victorian theatre has a purpose: to explain the tenacious power of the sexually charged myth of Dracula."-- Brenda Maddox, author of The Married Man: The Life of D. H. Lawrence"Bram Stoker will be remembered for his devotedly long service to the great actor Sir Henry Irving, excellently commemorated in this fascinating account of their work together."-- Sir John Gielgud"The Lyceum chapters are wonderfully alive: Barbara Belford captures what I am sure are the tone and atmosphere of Irving's theatre, and clarified many things I had never understood about that opaque character Bram Stoker."-- Nina Auerbach |
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About the Author |
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Barbara Belford is the author of Violet: The Story of the Irrepressible Violet Hunt and Her Circle of Lovers and Friends and Brilliant Bylines: A Biographical Anthology of Notable Newspaperwomen in America. She is a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and lives in New York |
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