Sir, - In her comprehensive feature on Bram Stoker, Katie Donovan states: "Sadly, Stoker never received any significant recognition for what he had created during his lifetime . . ." Sadly, he has received little significant recognition in his own country a century after first publication of his influential novel. Bord Failte, An Gum and An Post are to be congratulated on their enterprise in marking this centenary, but we are still slow to honour a truly remarkable Irishman, who not only wrote Dracula but also encouraged enlightened theatregoing public in Dublin years before the Abbey. In 1876, Stoker organised a formal address for Irving at Trinity College, offering homage for acting which "enobles and elevates intellectual and moral culture", while the triumphal procession for Irving through the streets of Dublin after University Night at the Theatre Royal (when the whole theatre was filled by Trinity professors, fellows, and students) has never been equalled in modern times by receptions for pop culture stars.
Trinity College has not so far announced any celebration of the Dracula Centenary. Perhaps the book is felt to be a little vulgar. Yet the hundreds of other books, articles, scholarly theses, and tedious pseudo Freudian analyses of Stoker and his work, usually slightly supercilious and self serving, and of course the tired jokes about "Fangs awfully", ignore the simple fact that Stoker was a truly great Irishman, and his book a remarkable and enduring phenomenon.
Other countries have been more enthusiastic than Ireland, and the Bram Stoker Society which I founded in 1980 has a strong membership overseas, and constantly receives enquiries from scholars and radio and television producers from France, Germany, US, Japan, and even the Arab Emirate. Most are surprised that the Dublin Writers Museum normally only has space for a small fraction of my Bram Stoker Collection, but it is gratifying that a larger exhibition is being mounted in this centenary year. It is surely ironic, however, that the tourist trade is more developed in Romania (Transylvania) than in Stoker's native land, but then, remember how long it took for James Joyce to be recognised as a national hero. Yours, etc.,
Chairman,
The Bram Stoker Society, Lakelands Close, Stillorgan,
Co Dublin.