New in paperback: The story of the mind behind the monster (and the monster within the mind)-a tale of obsession and hero worship in Victorian England.

"What a splendid subject to sink one's teeth into," raved the Washington Post. Here was a six-foot-two Irishman with a red beard-a Victorian family man, a spirited debater, and the author of novels and short stories largely forgotten today. All, of course, except for Dracula, which has enjoyed countless stage and screen incarnations and transformations and haunted the dreams of many generations. Bram Stoker lived at the very center of late-Victorian social and artistic life and numbered among his friends Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Whistler, Gladstone, and Tennyson. But it was his relationship with the mesmerizing, domineering actor Henry Irving that may have played the most crucial role in Stoker's life-a real-life monster who ultimately led to Stoker's most famous creation. In this book that the Baltimore Sun called "superb," Barbara Belford draws on unpublished archival material to reveal the links between the reticent author's life, his vampire tale, and the political, occult, cultural, and sexual background of the 1890's.

author: Barbara Belford asin: 0306810980 binding: Paperback list price: $20.00 USD amazon price: $18.00 USD other availability:

Posted by Vladimir Thu, 03/22/2007 - 15:08

 

Budapest travel guide

"Budapest seems a wonderful place... The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East." So begins Bram Stoker's Dracula, written in a time when the city was seen as Europe's final frontier. Today, Budapest is rather more familiar (it joined the EU in 2004) - although it has lost none of its original appeal.

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Refusal

I'm not really sure how to say it,
and I'm not quite positive I mean it,
but it's been resting there
in the back of my head
and I really don't know how to sleep.
My attention is just so far off,
and nothing can shake me out of it,
it's like I'm caught in here
waiting for something unknown
can you show me which way the exit is?
My existance means nothing anymore,
and you're constantly nudging my back,
I wish you would just stop it
quit trying to push me forward

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Chapter 34: The Room

*waking in the room, Saraphine knows that she is in the Black Raven Inn. Not knowing nor remembering how she got there, she is still very groggy and can't see very well, she can make out a figure standing over her*

"Hello? Who are you and where am I?" She manages to stammer before falling back asleep.

Saraphine Anura
14 May 2001

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Miss Toronto Tourism not welcoming Wiccans

January 27, 2008 (Torontoist) -- Say, who's that dude with the pitchfork selecting the next queen of Toronto's tourism industry? Hmmm, could it be...SATAN?!!! It seems that a Toronto woman was invited to judge a local beauty pageant, only to have the invite retracted because some of her hobbies were deemed a little too demonistic.

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A Bloody Embrace

for centuries I've searched
wandered the beaten path
been led astray..and for what?
Who would dare deny the vampire's immortal kiss?
a sacred embrace
I will hold the colour of your eyes when no other remembers your name
your legacy written in my heart

Scarlette Death
January 2, 2002

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