This selection of Irish animals, native or introduced, is taken from the Appletree Press title Animals of Ireland. There will be a number of extracts from the book in coming months. The book contains highly detailed full colour illustrations to complement the detailed explanatory text.

Bram Stoker

Abraham Stoker was born in Dublin on 8 November 1847. On leaving Trinity College, Dublin, he joined the civil service, but his principal interest was the theatre, and in 1871 he became an unpaid drama critic of the Dublin Evening Mail. In 1876 an admiring review of Henry Irving's Hamlet at the Theatre Royal in Dublin led to an invitation to meet the famous actor. It was the beginning of a warm friendship, and in 1878, when Irving took over the Lyceum Theatre in London, he asked Stoker to become his business manager. The partnership lasted until Irving's death in 1905.

In 1882 Stoker published a collection of children's stories, Under the Sunset, in which his taste for the macabre is already apparent; one story is drawn from his mother's memory of a cholera outbreak in Sligo. His first novel, The Snake's Pass (1890), concerns a search for legendary treasure in the West of Ireland, and he went on to write The Shoulder of Shasta (1895) and The Watter's Mou (1895) before publishing his famous novel Dracula in 1897. While Stoker drew the name from Vlad Dracula, a fifteenth-century Wallachian prince given to impaling his enemies on stakes, there had been earlier works on vampirism, notably a story by his compatriot Sheridan Le Fanu.

Stoker had not visited Transylvania but considerable research in the British Museum allowed him to furnish a convincing setting for Count Dracula's castle. Dracula was generally well received by reviewers, who drew comparisons with such novels as Frankenstein and The Fall of the House of Usher. However, it was Hamilton Deane's 1924 dramatisation of the novel, long after Stoker's death, that made the character of Dracula famous, leading eventually to a notable 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi, who had played the role on Broadway. New adaptations continue to be made for stage and screen.

Stoker's later novels, romances as well as his more effective horror stories, include Miss Betty (1898), The Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903), The Lady of the Shroud (1909) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911). He also wrote his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906) and Famous Impostors (1910).

Stoker died in London on 20 April 1912. Dracula's Guest, and Other Weird Stories, containing some of his best works of horror, was published in 1914.

From the Appletree Press title: Great Irish Writers, or from Amazon.com.
Also from Appletree: Irish Museums and Heritage Centres.