Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) spent most of his working life as business manager to the actor Henry Irving, and wrote Dracula in his spare time over several years of research into folklore and Eastern European geography. The novel is assembled entirely from documents — journals, letters, telegrams, newspaper cuttings, phonograph recordings — so that the reader always knows slightly more than any single character. That structure is the reason it still works. It established almost every convention later associated with vampires, few of which existed in the folklore Stoker started from. Quotes are cited by chapter.