10 Facts about Dracula Author Bram Stoker

The list, care of the Telegraph.

From said list...

• Born in Dublin, Stoker had an ancient, colourful lineage on his mother's side – including the legendary sheriff of Galway, who hanged his own son. It was material the writer mined in his fiction. 

• A key inspiration for Dracula was always said to have been Vlad the Impaler, the 15th-century Transylvanian-born prince also known as Vlad III Dracula of Wallachia. However, historian Fiona Fitzsimons says: “Stoker did not use overtly Irish references in Dracula, but his main theme is taken from Irish history – the history, we now learn, of his own family – recast in the writer’s imagination. Manus the Magnificent (Manus O’Donnell,who once ruled much of Ireland) was Stoker’s direct ancestor and was an influence on the book."