Stoker, Bram

Known primarily as the author of Dracula , perhaps the Victorian period's preeminent example of gothic fiction, Bram Stoker also wrote eighteen other books. Eclipsed during his lifetime by his employer, the actor Henry Irving, as well as by Dracula , Stoker has recently come into his own as a writer. Not only have scholars applied a number of critical approaches to Dracula – including psychoanalysis, feminist criticism, gender studies, Marxist criticism, queer studies, and postcolonial criticism – but they are also beginning to study his other fiction. This more comprehensive approach has led to seeing Stoker as a writer of Irish literature as well as a writer who experimented in numerous genres of Victorian popular literature, including gothic literature, the Western, historical fiction, and the romance.