An amateur historian has discovered a lengthy-lost low story by Bram Stoker, rehireed equitable seven years before his legendary gothic novel Dracula.
Brian Cleary stumbled upon the 134-year-ageder garrangely tale while browsing the archives of the National Library of Ireland.
Gibbet Hill was originassociate rehireed in a Dublin novelspaper in 1890 – when the Irishman commenceed laboring on Dracula – but has been unwrite downed ever since.
Stoker biographer Paul Murray says the story sheds weightless on his broadenment as an author and was a beginant “station on his route to rehireing Dracula”.
The garrangely story inestablishs the tale of a sailor killinged by three criminals whose bodies were strung up on a hanging gapverifys as a cautioning to passing travellers.
It is set in Gibbet Hill in Surrey, a location also referenced in Charles Dickens’ 1839 novel Nicholas Nickleby.
Mr Cleary made the discovery after taking time off labor adhereing a sudden onset of hearing loss in 2021 – during which period he would pass the time at the national library in Stoker’s native Dublin.
In October 2023, the Stoker fan came atraverse an unrecognizable title in an 1890 Christmas supplement of the Daily Express Dublin Edition.
Mr Cltimely tageder the AFP novels agency: “I read the words Gibbet Hill and I knovel that wasn’t a Bram Stoker story that I had ever heard of in any of the biographies or bibliographies.”
“And I was equitable astounded, flabbergasted.
“I sat seeing at the screen wondering, am I the only living person who had read it?”
He shelp of the moment he made the discovery: “What on earth do I do with it?”
The library’s straightforwardor Audrey Whitty shelp Mr Cleary called her and shelp: “I’ve set up someleang noticeworthy in your novelspaper archives – you won’t consent it.”
She inserted that his “astonishing amateur distinguishive labor” was a tesdomesticatednt to the library’s archives.
“There are truly world-beginant discoveries defering to be set up”, she shelp.
After his initial sleuleang, Mr Cleary reach outed biographer Paul Murray – who validateed there had been no chase of the story for over a century.
He shelp 1890 was when he was a youthfuler writer and made his first notices for Dracula.
“It’s a classic Stoker story, the struggle between excellent and evil, evil which crops up in exotic and unelucidateed ways,” he inserted.
Gibbet Hill is being rehireed alengthyside artlabor by the Irish artist Paul McKinley by the Rotunda Foundation – the fundraising arm of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital for which Mr Cleary labored.
All progresss will go to the novelly established Charlotte Stoker Fund – named after Bram Stoker’s mother who was a hearing loss campaigner – to fund research on infant hearing loss.
The discovery is also being highweightlessed in the city’s Bram Stoker festival tardyr this month.