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From: MARTIN V. RICCARDO
Date: 31 Mar 2001
Time: 13:02:17
Remote Name: 62.254.0.6
My Quest For Bram Stoker. by Harry Ludlam. Published by Dracula Press. REVIEW BY MARTIN V. RICCARDO, Founder & President of VAMPIRE STUDIES. As the first major biographer of Bram Stoker, Harry Ludlam provides fascinating details about his quest to unearth the life of the man who wrote Dracula. I was especially interested in reading about Stoker’s son Noel, someone I have always wondered about. The book also reveals that Charlotte Stoker, Bram’s wife, was a remarkable person in her own right.It was surprising to hear how little interest there was in Bram Stoker at the time Ludlam was researching his book. With very little to go on, he was able to track down many important people in the life of Stoker and his vampire creation. Hamilton Deane, the man who wrote and produced the first popular play of Dracula is shown to be an amazing character of whom I would like to know more. It was a real pleasure to read Ludlam’s expert opinions on the various Dracula movies and plays that have come out in the thirty-five years since he wrote the first Stoker biography. I was also struck by a letter he received from actor Christopher Lee. In it, Lee admits that in his role as Dracula, he ‘tried to portray what Nathaniel Hawthorne terms the awful loneliness of evil.’I recommend this book to writers because it details how extremely difficult it usually is to get a book published. Ludlam describes the many rejections and other obstacles he encountered, and at the end of the book, he suggests he still isn’t sure if it was worth the effort. Speaking for fans worldwide of Stoker and Dracula, I can assure him that it was.My Quest for Bram Stoker may be ordered from the UK by sending a cheque for £13 sterling to: Dr. Jeanne Youngson, Penthouse North, 29 Washington Square West, New York, N.Y. 10011-9180 USA. This includes postage by airmail.
