The collaboration with Irving was very important for Stoker and through him he became involved in London's high society, where he met, among other notables, James McNeil Whistler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The couple moved to London, where Stoker became business manager (at first as acting-manager) of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years. In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde.

He also wrote stories, and in 1872 'The Crystal Cup' was published by the London Society, followed by 'The Chain of Destiny' in four parts in The Shamrock. His interest in theatre led to a lifelong friendship with the English actor Henry Irving. In 1876, while employed as a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote a non-fiction book (The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, published 1879) and theatre reviews for The Dublin Mail, a newspaper partly owned by fellow horror writer J. He served as auditor of the college historical society and as president of the university philosophical society with his first paper on 'Sensationalism in Fiction and Society.' Of this time, Stoker wrote, 'I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years.'Īfter his recovery, he, a normal young man, even excelled as a university athlete at Trinity college, Dublin form 1864 to 1870 and graduated with honors in mathematics. Stoker, an invalid, started school at the age of seven years in 1854, when he made a complete and astounding recovery. The parents, members of church of Ireland, attended the parish church of Saint John the Baptist, located on Seafield road west in Clontarf with their baptized children. The feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornely Stoker at 15 Marino crescent, then as now called 'the crescent,' in Fairview, a coastal suburb of Dublin, Ireland, bore this third of seven children. Irish-born Abraham Stoker, known as Bram, of Britain wrote the gothic horror novel Dracula (1897).

Dracula's guest