In the late Victorian era the business manager of the Lyceum theatre and future vampire-chronicler Bram Stoker walked to work for nearly 20 years along the Thames from Chelsea to the Strand. At home his wife, the society beauty Florence Balcombe (who had turned down Oscar Wilde, perhaps wisely), held salons and captivated artists and writers. After long days managing pre-eminent Shakespearean actor Sir Henry Irving and his leading lady (and rumoured lover) Ellen Terry, Bram dined with the rich and famous at the Beefsteak Club. We know much about his social world, but little about his inner life. This talk will explore Stoker's time in London and the capital's appearance in his fiction, most famously in Dracula and The Jewel of Seven Stars.

Tickets £12 including a delightful gin cocktail.

Roger Luckhurst
Roger Luckhurst has written books on science fiction, horror and the Gothic. His previous publications include The Mummy's Curse: The True Story of a Dark Fantasy and critical studies of the films The Shining and Alien. He has also co-editied books including The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c.1880-1900 and Transactions and Encounters: Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century. He has edited numerous Gothic classics, including Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine and Bram Stoker's Dracula.