Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. Although a semi-invalid as a child, he went on the gain a reputation as a fine athlete at Trinity College, where he also excelled in mathematics and philosophy. Stoker worked as a civil servant and a journalist before becoming the personal secretary of the famous actor Henry Irving. He also wrote 15 works of fiction, only one of which is very memorable - Dracula (1897). This work, involving hypnotism, magic, the supernatural, and other elements of gothic fiction, went on to sell over one million copies and is still selling strongly today. So well known has his fictional character become that today it is possible to visit the castle… of Count Dracula in the Transylvanian region of Romania, a country that Stoker never visited. Several film versions of the story, both serious and comic, have made Stoker's work a part of modern mythology. His novel The Lair of the White Worm (1911) has also been made into film. It and the novel The Lady of the Shroud are, like Dracula, fantastic tales of horror.
Fiona Stafford is Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. She has published widely on Romantic literature, Scottish and Irish literature and poetic dialogues. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Robert Burns Centre in Glasgow. Her books include Local Attachments (OUP, 2010); Brief Lives: Jane Austen (Hesperus, 2008); Starting Lines in Scottish, Irish and English Poetry, from Burns to Heaney (OUP, 2000); The Last of the Race (OUP, 1994); The Sublime Savage: James Macpherson and the Poems of Ossian (EUP, 1988).