1847 | Abraham Stoker is born on November 8 in Dublin to Charlotte and Abraham Stoker. Nursed by his uncle William through a lengthy childhood illness, Bram is repeatedly bled to improve his condition. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are published. |
1848 | Revolutions take place in Paris, Vienna, Milan, Rome, and Venice. |
1849 | Bram’s brother Tom is born. Edgar Allan Poe dies. |
1854 | Bram’s brother George is born. Bram walks unaided for the first time. His illness ends and does not return for the rest of his relatively healthy life. Britain and France declare war on Russia. Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is published. Oscar Wilde is born. |
1855 | Charlotte Brontë dies. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published. |
1856 | Sigmund Freud is born. |
1859 | Stoker enters preparatory school, where he will study until 1863. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities are published. Arthur Conan Doyle is born. |
1863 | Stoker enters Trinity College in Dublin, where he studies science and mathematics, and plays competitive sports. |
1865 | The American Civil War ends. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is published. William Butler Yeats is born. |
1867 | Stoker attends a performance of Richard Sheridan’s The Rivals, starring Henry Irving, at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. |
1868 | After graduating with honors and an M.A. degree in mathematics from Trinity College, Stoker enters the civil service at Dublin Castle. |
1871 | Stoker’s first theater review for the Dublin Evening Mail is published anonymously. Bram’s mother, father, and two sisters move to the continent. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and the first installment of George Eliot’s Middlemarch are published. |
1872 | Stoker delivers an address entitled “The Necessity for Political Honesty”; later published, it is Stoker’s first signed work. |
1874 | Stoker visits Paris. Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is published. |
1875 | Three stories by Stoker appear in the weekly publication The Shamrock. |
1876 | Stoker’s father dies in Naples. Stoker meets the actor Henry Irving and is greatly moved by Irving’s reading of the poem “The Dream of Eugene Aram.” |
1877 | Stoker resigns from his position as drama critic to write a book for the clerks of the petty sessions. |
1878 | Stoker marries Florence Balcombe and becomes business manager of Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theatre. |
1879 | Stoker’s first book, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, is published. |
1882 | Stoker is awarded the Bronze Medal from the Royal Humane Society for endeavoring to prevent a suicide. Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are born. Charles Darwin dies. |
1886 | Stoker studies law, and publishes an essay on the United States entitled “A Glimpse of America.” |
1888 | Jack the Ripper causes fear to spread through London. T. S. Eliot is born. |
1890 | Stoker begins to write Dracula. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is published. |
1892 | Walt Whitman dies. |
1895 | Oscar Wilde is jailed for homosexual offenses. H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine is published. |
1897 | Dracula is published. Soon after, the story is enacted on the Lyceum stage. |
1898 | Miss Betty is published and then produced onstage. |
1900 | Oscar Wilde dies. |
1901 | Bram’s mother and Queen Victoria die. |
1902 | The Mystery of the Sea and The Jewel of Seven Stars are published. The Lyceum Theatre is closed. |
1904 | Irving’s company conducts its final tour of the United States. |
1905 | The Man is published. Henry Irving collapses and dies. |
1906 | Stoker has his first stroke. Samuel Beckett is born. |
1910 | Stoker has a second stroke. |
1911 | The Lair of the White Worm, Stoker’s final novel, is published. |
1912 | Bram Stoker dies, on April 20. |
1914 | A group of stories chosen by Stoker and edited by his wife appears as Dracula’s Guest. |