Famous people and Whitby: Bram Stoker

Whitby is famous for?

Whitby (St Hilda's) Abbey, Dracula, Bram Stoker, Captain Cook, Whitby Goths, Whitby Regatta, Whitby Whaling, Fishing, St Mary's Church, Whitby Jet, Whitby Witches, Whitby Town, The Whitby Seagull, 199 Steps, Harbour, Whitby Piers, Shipping Trades, Alum Production, B&Bs, The East Cliff, Captain William Scoresby, Fisherman's Cottages, Whitby's Yards, Steps and cobbled streets, Fish and Chips, The Endeavour, Ghost Walks, Sea Food, Seaside, The West Cliff, Whitby Folk Festival, Caedmon, Frank Sutcliffe, Whitby Kippers, Lobster, Crabs and Scampi, Synod of A.D. 664, Australian 'First Fleet' supply vessels,

Do you know any other things Whitby is famous for? Let us know and we'll add it to the list, see here!

Discover Whitby's street names and their history here

Break the ice, Jury, Binge drinking, Incredible Hulk, Down the hatch, ...discover these and many more well known phrases from our maritime past here

Find out about the building styles and architecture found in the buildings of Whitby here.

Whitby in times gone by, ads from the past here

Old Whitby Ad

Much has been written about the importance of the town of Whitby. Tourists flock there to see the magnificent ruins of Whitby Abbey; the memorial to Caedmon (“the father of English poetry”), the magnificent monument to Captain James Cook who set sail from Whitby for the South Seas, and – of course – to sample the world-famous Whitby fish and chips.

Whitby has an additional claim to fame, albeit one that has led to a few misgivings and a healthy plate of misinformation: Dublin-born author Bram Stoker visited the town while working on his novel Dracula (published in 1897) and set three important chapters of his book (6-9) in the seaside town. The exact nature of this visit and the impact it had on his novel can be ascertained through an examination of two primary sources: Stoker’s working notes for Dracula (published in 2009) and the novel itself.

Although Stoker never visited Transylvania, the most famous of the settings in Dracula, he was familiar with Whitby. He, his wife Florence and their son Noel, vacationed there during the summer of 1890, arriving in late July and staying for three weeks. There is one major misconception that we can lay to rest here and now. The town of Whitby did not inspire Stoker to write the novel. By July of 1890, Stoker had already prepared several pages of notes for his book, with sketchy plot outlines and lists of characters. (His earliest notes, written in London, are dated March 8.) He had a tentative name for his vampire (Count Wampyr) and had planned to have the Count enter England via Dover. But his stay in Whitby led him to change both.

Chapter 6 of Dracula begins with a description of Whitby, recorded by Mina in her journal. Mina has just arrived to join her friend Lucy for a summer holiday, and admires the beauty of the town:

"This is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour … The houses of the old town – the side away from us – are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other anyhow, like the pictures we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes and which is a scene of part of ‘Marmion’, where the girl is built up in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it and the town there is another church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay, to where the headland called Kettleness stretches out into the sea"

The church and the graveyard feature prominently in the Whitby chapters of Dracula. It is here that Mina and Lucy spend time sitting on their favourite bench. Here they meet the old fisherman, Mr Swales, who regales them with stories gleaned from inscriptions on the headstones. This is also the spot where Dracula first attacks Lucy. As Mina climbs the 199 steps and approaches the bench she sees “something long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure” and catches a glimpse of his “white face and red, gleaming eyes.” By the time she reaches it, her friend is alone.

Of the 124 pages that comprise Stoker’s notes for Dracula, about 20 are details about Whitby. These indicate the nature of the research that he engaged in while in the town. For details about the running aground of the Demeter (the ship which brings Dracula to England), Stoker drew on a coastguard account of an actual event – the grounding of a Russian schooner (the Dimitry) just five years earlier. While in the town, he consulted F.K. Robinson’s A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Whitby (1876) and compiled a list of local words and phrases that he incorporated into the dialect of the inhabitants. His notes also record a conversation with local fishermen, some jottings about the scenery and the weather, several sketches of landmarks, as well as a ten-page list of names from tombstones in the Whitby churchyard (some of which he borrowed for minor characters).

Whitby can also be figuratively called the “birthplace of Dracula”, for it was there at the Public Library in the summer of 1890 that Stoker found the name for his vampire. He borrowed a book by William Wilkinson entitled An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. In it he found a very brief reference to a fifteenth-century ruler (“voivode”) named Dracula, a name which, according to Wilkinson, meant “devil.” Stoker copied this information directly into his notes and soon changed every occurrence of “Count Wampyr” to “Count Dracula.” We know much more about this historical Dracula than Stoker did. There is no evidence that he knew any more than the fragments of information provided by Wilkinson. In spite of this, there is a widespread misconception today that Vlad the Impaler (the “Dracula” of history) was the inspiration for Stoker’s novel. He most certainly was not.

Many factors interacted to produce what would become the world’s best-known horror novel. Bram Stoker’s visit to Whitby was among the most important.

ELIZABETH MILLER is recognized internationally for her expertise on Bram Stoker and his classic novel Dracula. Among her many publications are the following: Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (2006), Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula (2008; with Robert Eighteen-Bisang) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula: A Documentary Journey (2009). Her websites and blog can be found at http://www.blooferland.com

Elizabeth Miller in Whitby

Why not visit the house he stayed whilst writing Dracula in Whitby, on the West Cliff.

See here.