Sir, - I was most interested to read Ann McElhinney's article on the "Dracula park" in your issue of February 26th.
As our Bram Stoker Society is the local representative of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, an international body of scholars and enthusiasts, we have been recently informed by the Bucharest head office that it sent a letter of protest against this cultural travesty, signed by academics and writers both from Romania and abroad, to the President of Romania last November.
I should like to correct one error in Ms McElhinney's otherwise excellent article, namely her reference to Stoker doing research about Vlad the Impaler "in the British National Library in London".
In fact, Stoker's research for his novel Dracula was conducted in the Reading Room of the British Museum during the 1880s and 1890s. The British Library was founded as a separate institution by an Act of Parliament in 1973.
Since this year marks the 90th anniversary of Bram Stoker's death, on April 20th 1912, our society will be holding a special memorial lecture, on Tuesday, April 23rd, in room 3026, Arts Building, TCD, at 8 p.m.
The guest speaker will be Dr Albert Power, Editor of the BS Society Journal, on the subject: "The English Gothic author William Beckford, and his relations with Buck Whalley, founder of the Irish Hellfire Club".
For further details, please contact the address below. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID LASS,
Honorary Secretary
and Librarian,
The Bram Stoker Society,
Regent House,
Trinity college,
Dublin 2.
e-mail: dlass@tcd.ie