"A dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night."

With howling dogs, a shimmering moon and a chill wind through a darkened landscape, these words could only come from one novel; the great horror classic, Dracula, penned by the Irish born writer Bram Stoker.

The name Dracula strikes fear whenever it is mentioned, such is the power of this novel, about a monstrous vampire that feeds on human blood. The character of Count Dracula himself has become as legendary as the hideous Frankenstein's monster in the history of horror, while the story of Dracula has been used time and again in films, dating back to the early 20th Century and the silent movies, right up to the present day and the post millennium Hollywood blockbuster.

But, what of the author of this gruesome novel of blood lust? Who created this tale of the living dead sucking every last drop of blood from their unsuspecting victims? In precisely the same way that Mary Shelley is little recognized for Frankenstein, the novel she created when she was a mere 18-years old, the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker is a similarly overlooked figure in the world of literature.