Editing Dracula (section)

== Background ==

=== Author ===
[[Bram Stoker]] was born in [[Clontarf, Dublin]] on 8 November 1842 as the third of seven children. A sickly child, he was homeschooled before attending a private day school.{{Sfn|Miller|2005|p=7}} Stoker attended [[Trinity College Dublin]] in the 1860s and began writing theatre reviews in the early 1870s. After Stoker wrote a review of a performance by stage actor [[Henry Irving]], the two became friends. In 1878, Irving offered Stoker a job as the business manager of London's [[Lyceum Theatre, London|Lyceum Theatre]], which he accepted. He married [[Florence Stoker|Florence Balcombe]] later that year.{{Sfn|Miller|2005|p=5}} Biographer Lisa Hopkins notes that this role required Stoker to be sociable and introduced him to the elites of [[19th-century London|Victorian London]]. Nonetheless, Stoker described himself as a private person who closely guarded his thoughts.{{Sfn|Hopkins|2007|pp=4, 51}}

He supplemented his theatre income by writing [[Romance novel|romance]] and [[sensation novel]]s,{{sfn|Eighteen-Bisang|Miller|2008|p=301}}{{sfn|Belford|2002|p=269}}{{efn|Sensation fiction is a genre characterised by the depiction of scandalous events—for example murder, theft, forgery, or adultery—within domestic settings.{{sfn|Rubery|2011}}}} but was more closely identified during his lifetime with the theatre than he was with the literary world.{{Sfn|Hopkins|2007|p=4}} By the time of his death in 1912, Stoker had published 18 books.{{Sfn|Hopkins|2007|p=1}} ''Dracula'' was Stoker's seventh published book, following ''[[The Shoulder of Shasta]]'' (1895) and preceding ''[[Miss Betty]]'' (1898).{{Sfn|Belford||2002|p=363}}{{Efn|Although published in 1898, ''Miss Betty'' was written in 1890.{{Sfn|Belford|2002|p=277}}}} Stoker's grand-nephew, [[Daniel Farson]], wrote that Stoker may have died from syphilis, but this is widely disputed by scholars.{{Efn|Stoker's grand-nephew provided Bram's death certificate to his [[general practitioner]], who said the cause of death and medical language used was consistent with syphilis.{{Sfn|Miller|2005|pp=30–31}} Miller and scholar [[Robert Eighteen-Bisang]] said that the language was inconclusive.{{Sfn|Eighteen-Bisang|Miller|2008|p=300}} The syphilis theory was rejected by Stoker scholars [[Leslie Shepard]] and [[William Hughes (professor)|William Hughes]] and by Stoker's descendant, Ivan Stoker Dixon.{{Sfn|Miller|2006|pp=114–115}}}} Novelist and playwright [[Hall Caine]], a close friend of Stoker's,{{Efn|''Dracula'' is, in fact, dedicated to Caine: "To my dear friend Hommy Beg".{{Sfn|Miller|2005|pp=33–34}}}} wrote in Stoker's obituary in ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' that—besides his [[biography]] on Irving—Stoker wrote only "to sell" and "had no higher aims".{{Sfn|Caine|1912|p=16}}

=== Inspiration ===
[[File:Mephistophles on the Brocken (cropped).jpg|thumb|alt=Drawing of Henry Irving on stage with right hand extended upright|upright=0.8|[[Henry Irving]] is widely considered to have inspired Dracula]]
Folkloric vampires predate Stoker's Dracula by hundreds of years.{{Sfn|Miller|2005a|p=11}} Stoker adopted some characteristics of folkloric vampires for his own, such as their aversion to garlic and staking as a means of killing them.{{Sfn|Miller|2005a|pp=44–45}} He invented other attributes—for example, Stoker's vampires must be invited into one's home, sleep on earth from their homeland and have no reflection in mirrors.{{Sfn|Miller|2005a|pp=45–46}} Sunlight is not fatal to Dracula in the novel—this was an invention of the unauthorised ''Dracula'' film ''[[Nosferatu]]'' (1922)—but it does weaken him.{{Sfn|Miller|2005a|p=45}}{{Sfn|Skal|2016|p=312}} Some of Stoker's inventions applied unrelated lore to vampires for the first time; for example, Dracula has no reflection because of a folkloric concept that mirrors show the human soul.{{Sfn|Skal|2016|p=312}} Some Irish scholars have suggested [[Irish folklore]] as an inspiration for the novel,{{Sfn|Curran|2000|pp=13–14}} for example the revenant [[Abhartach]],{{Sfn|Curran|2000|pp=13–14}} and the 11th-century High King of Ireland [[Brian Boru]].{{Sfn|Killeen|2023|p=177}}{{Efn|Jarlath Killeen disparages an "endlessly repeated" and "extremely unlikely" claim that Dracula's name was inspired by {{lang|ga|droch fhola}}, an Irish phrase meaning 'bad blood'.{{Sfn|Killeen|2023|p=178}}}} ''Dracula'' scholar [[Elizabeth Miller (academic)|Elizabeth Miller]] notes that in his childhood Stoker was exposed to supernatural tales and Irish oral history involving premature burials and staked bodies.{{Sfn|Miller|2006|p=30}}

[[Count Dracula]] has literary progenitors. [[John William Polidori]]'s "[[The Vampyre]]" (1819) includes an aristocratic vampire with powers of seduction.{{Sfn|Miller|2005|p=21}} The lesbian vampire of [[Sheridan Le Fanu]]'s ''[[Carmilla]]'' (1872) can transform into a cat, as Dracula can transform into a dog.{{Sfn|Milbank|1998|p=15}} Dracula resembles earlier Gothic villains in appearance,{{Sfn|Seed|1985|p=62}} with Miller comparing him to the villains of [[Ann Radcliffe]]'s ''[[The Italian (Radcliffe novel)|The Italian]]'' (1796) and [[Matthew Gregory Lewis]]'s ''[[The Monk]]'' (1796).{{Sfn|Miller|2005|p=36}}

There is almost unanimous consensus that Dracula was inspired, in part, by Henry Irving. Scholars note the Count's tall and lean physique and aquiline nose,{{Sfn|Giesen|2019|p=39}} with ''Dracula'' scholar [[William Hughes (professor)|William Hughes]] specifically citing the influence of Irving's performance as [[Shylock]] in a [[Lyceum Theatre, London|Lyceum Theatre]] production of ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]''.{{Sfn|Hughes|2009|p=38}} Stoker's contemporaries remarked upon the similarity.{{Sfn|Warren|2002|pp=1132–1133}} Stoker had praised a performance of Irving as "a wonderful impression of a dead man fictitiously alive [with eyes like] cinders of glowing red from out the marble face".{{Sfn|Miller|2006|pp=50–51}} [[Louis S. Warren]] writes that ''Dracula'' was founded on "the fear and animosity his employer inspired in him".{{Sfn|Warren|2002|p=1133}}{{Efn|Warren replicates an argument by Barbara Belford, writing that Irving was "a self-absorbed and profoundly manipulative man" who "[cultivated] rivalries between his followers", and made Stoker jealous by turning "his gaze to other men, as he did by 1885".{{Sfn|Warren|2002|p=1131}}}} Miller contests this, describing Stoker's attitude towards him as "adulation".{{Sfn|Miller|2006|pp=90–91}}

Historical figures have been suggested as inspirations for Count Dracula but there is no consensus. In a 1972 book, [[Raymond T. McNally]] and [[Radu Florescu]] popularised the idea that [[Ármin Vámbéry]] supplied Stoker with information about [[Vlad the Impaler|Vlad Dracula]], commonly known as Vlad the Impaler.{{Sfn|Dearden|2014}}{{Efn|There is a reference to Vámbéry in the novel, an "Arminius, of Buda-Pesh University", who is familiar with the historical Vlad III and is a friend of [[Abraham Van Helsing]].{{Sfn|Leblanc|1997|p=360}}}} Their investigation, however, found nothing about "Vlad, Dracula, or vampires" within Vámbéry's published papers,{{Sfn|McNally|Florescu|1994|p=150}} nor in Stoker's notes about their meeting.{{Sfn|Leblanc|1997|p=360}}  Miller calls the link to Vlad III "tenuous", indicating that Stoker incorporated a large amount of "insignificant detail" from his research, and [[Rhetorical question|rhetorically]] asking why he would omit Vlad III's infamous cruelty.{{Sfn|Miller|1996|p=2}}{{efn|Miller presented this article at the second Transylvanian Society of Dracula Symposium,{{Sfn|Leblanc|1997|p=362}} but it has been reproduced elsewhere; for example, in the ''[[Dictionary of Literary Biography]]'' in 2005.{{Sfn|Miller|2005}}}} McNally additionally suggested in 1983 that the crimes of [[Elizabeth Báthory]] inspired Stoker.{{Sfn|Fitts|1998|p=34}}{{Efn|Recent scholarship has questioned whether Bathory's crimes were exaggerated by her political opponents,{{Sfn|Kord|2009|p=60}} with others noting that very little is concretely known about her life.{{Sfn|Stephanou|2014|p=90}}}} A book used by Stoker for research, ''The Book of Were-Wolves'', does contain some information on Báthory, but Stoker never took notes from the short section devoted to her.{{Sfn|Miller|1999|pp=187–188}} Miller and her co-author [[Robert Eighteen-Bisang]] concur that there is no evidence Báthory inspired Stoker.{{Sfn|Eighteen-Bisang|Miller|2008|p=131}}{{Efn|In 2000, Miller's book-length study, ''Dracula: Sense and Nonsense'', was said by academic Noel Chevalier to correct "not only leading ''Dracula'' scholars, but non-specialists and popular film and television documentaries".{{sfn|Chevalier|2002|p=749}}}}{{efn|Other critics have concurred with Miller. Mathias Clasen describes her as "a tireless debunker of academic ''Dracula'' myths".{{Sfn|Clasen|2012|p=379}} In response to several lines of query as to the historical origin of ''Dracula'', Benjamin H. Leblanc reproduces her arguments in his critical history on the novel.{{Sfn|Leblanc|1997|p=362}}}}