, North Yorkshire, the English coastal town frequented by Stoker, and where
Count Dracula comes ashore in
Dracula Stoker visited the English coastal town of
Whitby in 1890, and that visit was said to be part of the inspiration for
Dracula, staying at a guesthouse in West Cliff at 6 Royal Crescent, doing his research at the public library at 7 Pier Road (now
Quayside Fish and Chips). Count Dracula comes ashore at Whitby, and in the shape of a black dog runs up the
199 steps to the graveyard of
St Mary's Church in the shadow of the
Whitby Abbey ruins. Stoker began writing novels while working as manager for Irving and secretary and director of London's Lyceum Theatre, beginning with ''
The Snake's Pass in 1890 and Dracula
in 1897. During this period, he was part of the literary staff of The Daily Telegraph in London, and he wrote other fiction, including the horror novels The Lady of the Shroud (1909) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). However this claim has been challenged by many including Elizabeth Miller, a professor who, since 1990, has had as her major field of research and writing Dracula'', and its author, sources, and influences. She has stated, "The only comment about the subject matter of the talk was that Vambery 'spoke loudly against Russian aggression.'" There had been nothing in their conversations about the "tales of the terrible Dracula" that are supposed to have "inspired Stoker to equate his vampire-protagonist with the long-dead tyrant." At any rate, by this time, Stoker's novel was well under way, and he was already using the name Dracula for his vampire. Stoker then spent several years researching Central and East European folklore and mythological stories of
vampires. The 1972 book
In Search of Dracula by
Radu Florescu and
Raymond McNally claimed that the Count in Stoker's novel was based on
Vlad III Dracula. However, according to
Elizabeth Miller, Stoker borrowed only the name and "scraps of miscellaneous information" about Romanian history; further, there are no comments about Vlad III in the author's working notes.
Dracula is an
epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic but completely fictional diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to the story, a skill which Stoker had developed as a newspaper writer. At the time of its publication,
Dracula was considered a "straightforward horror novel" based on imaginary creations of
supernatural life. The book also established Stoker's reputation as one of the most acclaimed writers of Gothic horror fiction. According to the
Encyclopedia of World Biography, Stoker's stories are today included in the categories of horror fiction, romanticized Gothic stories, and melodrama. They are classified alongside other works of popular fiction, such as
Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein, which also used the myth-making and story-telling method of having
multiple narrators telling the same tale from different perspectives. According to historian Jules Zanger, this leads the reader to the assumption that "they can't all be lying". The original 541-page typescript of
Dracula was believed to have been lost until it was found in a barn in northwestern Pennsylvania in the early 1980s. It consisted of typed sheets with many emendations, and handwritten on the title page was "THE UN-DEAD." The author's name was shown at the bottom as Bram Stoker. Author Robert Latham remarked: "the most famous horror novel ever published, its title changed at the last minute". The typescript was purchased by
Microsoft co-founder
Paul Allen. Stoker's inspirations for the story, in addition to Whitby, may have included a visit to
Slains Castle in
Aberdeenshire, a visit to the crypts of
St. Michan's Church in Dublin, and the novella
Carmilla by
Sheridan Le Fanu. Stoker's original research notes for the novel are kept by the
Rosenbach Museum and Library in
Philadelphia. A facsimile edition of the notes was created by
Elizabeth Miller and
Robert Eighteen-Bisang in 2008. ==Stoker at the London Library==