31 Days of Halloween: Bram Stoker’s great-grandson finds journal in which author sketched out Dracula

Bram Stoker’s private journal -in which he sketched out his first thoughts about his legendary creation Dracula -has been unearthed after more than 100 years.

The thin, unmarked book was discovered on a shelf in his great-grandson’s home on the Isle of Wight. It had been passed down by his ancestors for more than a century before arriving in Noel Dobbs’ home.

He was unaware of what the book was until a US researcher contacted him to ask if he knew about a journal his famous relative had written.

Dobbs then dug out the tiny tome which was signed ‘Abraham Stoker’. There were 305 entries dating from 1871 when Stoker was in his 20s. Some are pages long, with others just a few sentences. The journal also contains romantic poems.

He sent photocopies of a few pages to his cousin, Dacre Stoker, a professor in South Carolina, who has now written a book about his famous ancestor based on the journal.

‘When I saw it, I was amazed. ‘I thought, “The Holy Grail! We’ve found it,” ’ said Mr Stoker.

‘There is so little written by Bram about Bram. Family, scholars and fans wanted to know what made the man who wrote Dracula tick. And here we had a major set of clues.’

His book, The Lost Journal, will be published next March to mark the centenary of the author’s death.

The last entry of Stoker’s journal in 1881 hints at a major character he would use in Dracula, a man who was driven to eat living things including flies. One passage says: ‘A man builds up his shadow on a wall bit by bit by adding to substance. Suddenly the shadow becomes alive.’

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