When Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to help Count Dracula buy a house in London, he makes a series of gruesome discoveries about his employer. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents occur in England: A seemingly unmanned ship sinks off the coast of Whitby, a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck, and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the "Master" and his imminent arrival.



As the acting manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, Bram Stoker was a recognisable figure: he would greet evening guests, and served as assistant to the stage actor Henry Irving. In a letter to Walt Whitman, Stoker described his own temperament as "secretive to the world", but he nonetheless led a relatively public life. Stoker supplemented his income from the theatre by writing romance and sensation novels, and had published 18 books by his death in 1912.