By Matthew Gibson
Published in Irish Studies Review, January 2025.
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Abstract

One of the most important formative influences on Bram Stoker was Edward Dowden, who as a young don had befriended and impressed the barely younger man, introducing him to the work of Walt Whitman. While Catherine Wynne and Adam Putz have recently observed the relation between Dowden’s criticism of the Victorian stage, and the Irish don’s relation with Irving, few have observed how Stoker’s own fiction is suffused with Dowden’s somewhat sectarian ideas in relation to literature and art, as well as his more progressive views on gender. In this article, there will be a discussion of the role played by Stoker in promoting Dowden’s fame abroad, the ways in which Dowden’s work on Shakespeare contributed to the framing of both Renaissance culture and gender relations in Stoker’s novel The Mystery of the Sea (1902), and how Dowden’s own appreciation of Stoker’s later novel The Man (1905) aids the modern reader in navigating that work’s main ideas. Therefore, while Dowden benefited greatly from the networking of his quondam student and friend, the intellectual influence of the Irish don on the author of Dracula was also seminal to Stoker’s worldview, as presented in his later novels.