STOKER, BRAM. (1847-1912). Irish author best known for Dracula. ALS. (“Bram Stoker”). 2/3p. 8vo. London, September 16, 1908. On his engraved Durham Place stationery. To Mr. Frost.

“I do not know where you could find programmes or souvenirs of Sir Henry Irving’s productions unless you wrote to Mrs. Lawrence Irving 10 Gilston Road, the Boltons, London SW. She might be able to tell you...”

After earning the attention of famed English actor Henry Irving (1838-1905) with a favorable review of his Dublin production of Hamlet, the pair became close friends and, in 1878, Irving suggested that Stoker move to London and help manage the Lyceum Theatre, a position he held for 27 years, and where he also served as Irving’s secretary. In that role, while continuing to write the fiction for which he would become best known on the side, Stoker became acquainted with London artists and luminaries including James McNeill Whistler, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, James M. Barrie, and Oscar Wilde (who for a time held a grudge against Stoker for marrying Florence Balcombe, the object of Wilde’s affections). Irving died on October 13, 1905 at the age of 67 after suffering a stroke following a stage performance and shortly after taking his leave of Stoker.

Irving’s son, playwright and actor Laurence Irving, and his wife, Mabel Hackney (1872-1914), who had performed in Henry Irving’s acting company, died in the 1914 sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland.

Stoker published his Gothic epistolary novel Dracula in 1897. It has since become one of the most famous and influential works of fiction in the English language.

Written from 4 Durham Place, where Stoker had moved in 1907. Curiously, “Durham Place” is an anagram of “Dracula Hemp,” and the smoke from burning hemp (marijuana) was thought by Romanians to be a way of “rendering strigoi [vampires] harmless,” (“Count Dracula and the Folkloric Vampire: Thirteen Comparisons,” Journal of Dracula Studies, Volume 3, 2001, Article 6, Johnson.)

Folded with normal wear and in very good condition.