DRACULA

Bram Stoker
1847-1912

Mysterious and tormented*: that's what we know about Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula. And, indeed*, that is how he must have been to imagine suck a bloodthirsty* creature. 104 years later, the author is perhaps not so well remembered but Dracula is certainly still as famous as ever. It's a case of a character that has ''eliminated'' its author!.

Who could have imagined such a thing?
What feverish*, tormented, creepy* imagination could the bloodiest* novel of all times have come from? Who was the inventor of Count Dracula, the famous vampire that would end up terrifying the whole of England and the rest of the world?

His name was Bram Stoker, a practically unknown writer when his novel appeared in London in 1897. Dracula is his creation, the creature who has even managed* to ''vampirise'' his author by becoming more famous than the man himself.

Dracula, the character, is now 115 years old, and is still going strong. The ''number one vampire'' regularly decides to come aout of the dark to appear on TV, in comics or in the cinema (there are 80 films about this ''adventures''!). What a great success* this was for the obscure Bram Stoker, who wrote only one masterpiece in his whole life, and it was this one!.


Literary comics 
-Monsters and medicine
Bram Stoker's life starts as horror story. He was born in Ireland, near Dublin, on the 8th of November 1847. His health* was very delicate, and he spent his childhood in bed, taking medicine and listening to stories about terrible monsters that his mother told him.
When he was 8 years old, he miraculously* got better, recovered his health and vitality and became a brilliant student and a highly trained sportsman*.


-A theatre lover
His two great passions were readingand the theatre.
He never missed the plays performed at the Royal Theatre in Dublin. There is where he met Henry Irving, a famous actor. This was the start of a friendship that lasted 30 years... Stoker, by that time*, was a big man with a ginger* beard.
In 1878, he worked as a theatre critic and went to fashinable* salons, particulary those organised by Oscar Wilde's family. Then, thanks to Henry Irving, he started to work as a stage* mmanager in the Lyceum Theatre in London.

-The supernatural
He wrote stories for children, in which it became clear thet he was interested in the supernatural.
He took this interest even further* by joining  a secret society whose objective was to make contact with ''great, unknown and superior beings'' through+ magic and astrology. There he met Arminius Vambéry, a man who firmly believed in the existence of vampires. Stoker was fascinated by this, and straight* away started studying the legends of the Eastern* countries which are full of these evil creatures.