Bram Stoker

Abraham Stoker spent the first seven years bedridden with an illness no one could name. He recovered, excelled at Trinity College Dublin as both rugby athlete and literary auditor, then settled into a decade pushing papers at Dublin Castle while moonlighting as a drama critic. The real turn came when he became personal assistant to actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre - a day job that lasted the rest of his working life. He wrote a dozen novels, mostly horror and mystery, and travelled regularly to Cruden Bay in Scotland, where the cold coast gave him the atmosphere for Dracula in 1897. That single novel eclipsed everything else: it made him the father of vampire fiction and left Count Dracula walking through every century since.