Something in the Blood
The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Edgar Award (Critical/Biographical)
Finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (Nonfiction)
Finalist for the Anthony Award (Critical Nonfiction)
A revelatory biography exhumes the haunted origins of the man behind the immortal myth, bringing us "the closest we can get to understanding [Bram Stoker] and his iconic tale" (The New Yorker).
In this groundbreaking portrait of the man who birthed an undying cultural icon, David J. Skal "pulls back the curtain to reveal the author who dreamed up this vampire" (TIME magazine). Examining the myriad anxieties plaguing the Victorian fin de siècle, Skal stages Bram Stoker’s infirm childhood against a grisly tableau of medical mysteries and horrors: cholera and famine fever, childhood opium abuse, frantic bloodletting, mesmeric quack cures, and the gnawing obsession with "bad blood" that pervades Dracula. In later years, Stoker’s ambiguous sexuality is explored through his passionate youthful correspondence with Walt Whitman, his adoration of the actor Sir Henry Irving, and his romantic rivalry with lifelong acquaintance Oscar Wilde—here portrayed as a stranger-than-fiction doppelgänger. Recalling the psychosexual contours of Stoker’s life and art in splendidly gothic detail, Something in the Blood is the definitive biography for years to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Known today almost exclusively as the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker (1847 1912) is thoroughly scrutinized in this sumptuous biography. Drawing on a wealth of research, Skal (Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen) finds credible influences for Stoker's classic novel in several key figures in his life: his strong-willed mother, who entertained her sickly young son with terrifying accounts of a cholera epidemic she lived through in the 1830s; Oscar Wilde, whose mother's salons he frequented and whose onetime love interest, Florence Balcombe, he eventually married; and Henry Irving, the renowned actor whom he served as business manager. As depicted by Skal, Stoker was a tireless workaholic who readily absorbed creative ideas from his experiences. Skal also breaks new critical ground, noting Dracula's similarities to Drink, a novel by Hall Caine, to whom Stoker dedicated his novel. Skal writes with intimate familiarity about his subject and his habits, and he has organized a remarkable amount of information into an engrossing narrative. There will likely be more biographies written about the author of Dracula, but they are not likely to surpass the achievement of this one. 16 pages of color and 80 black-and-white illustrations.
