According to ‘Encyclopedia of World Biography’, Bram (short for Abraham) Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November 8, 1847. He was a sickly child, bedridden for much of his boyhood until about the age of seven. As a youth, Stoker was intrigued by the stories told him by his mother, Charlotte. Especially influential to the mind of young Stoker were the stories she related about the cholera epidemic of 1832 which claimed thousands of lives. These cruel and vivid tales began to shape the young Stoker's imagination. In 1867, he saw the famous Shakespearean actor, Henry Irving, act at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, and developed a passion for the theater. After gaining a degree in pure mathematics in 1870, he followed his father into the civil service. He also worked as an unpaid drama critic. In 1875, he published his first horror story, "The Chain of Destiny." Stoker's life changed after a momentous meeting with Irving in 1876. Following Irving's recitation of a melodramatic poem, Stoker, by his own report, "burst out into something like a violent fit of hysterics." and proceeded to strike up a lifelong friendship with Irving.

Stoker left the civil service in 1878 when he accepted Irving's invitation to become the manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned. Stoker retained this post until Irving's death in 1905, accompanying him on his American tours. Also in 1878, Stoker married a noted beauty and aspiring actress, Florence Balcombe. In 1879, he published a dry work called The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, and Florence gave birth to their only child, a son called Noel. Stoker's early writing is not considered to be of high quality. He published a collection of children's stories, Under the Sunset, in 1881, and an unsuccessful novel, The Snake's Pass, in serial form in 1889. In 1890, Stoker began a seven-year period of research for his best-known novel, Dracula, which was finally published in 1897. Dracula was a bestseller on first publication and is still popular today: its influence on the horror genre has been great. "