The Primrose Path

The Primrose Path (1875) is the debut novel of Irish author Bram Stoker. Written over two decades before Dracula, his masterpiece, The Primrose Path helped to establish the Irish master of Gothic horror's reputation as a leading writer of the early-twentieth century. Inspired by the temperance movement, Stoker crafts a simple narrative about a man brought low through temptation and a lack of opportunity. Originally serialized in The Shamrock, a weekly magazine published in Ireland, The Primrose Path is a largely unrecognized novel that deserves reassessment by readers and academics alike. Jerry O'Sullivan is a good man who wants noting more to provide for his young wife in order to start a family. Looking for work as a theatrical carpenter, he moves from his native Dublin to the sprawling city of London, where he soon finds work and hopes to settle down. After a series of accidents, however, he grows distant from his wife Katey and falls victim to the temptations of alcohol. As he begins to lose control, he grows jealous, loses his job, and begins to harbor dangerous fantasies. Soon, despite his moral upbringing, he risks committing an act too heinous to imagine. The Primrose Path is a gripping work of horror and naturalism by Bram Stoker, the secretive and vastly underrated creator of Dracula, one of history's greatest villains. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Bram Stoker's The Primrose Path is a classic of Irish literature reimagined for modern readers.

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was an Irish novelist. Born in Dublin, Stoker suffered from an unknown illness as a young boy before entering school at the age of seven. He would later remark that the time he spent bedridden enabled him to cultivate his imagination, contributing to his later success as a writer. He attended Trinity College, Dublin from 1864, graduating with a BA before returning to obtain an MA in 1875. After university, he worked as a theatre critic, writing a positive review of acclaimed Victorian actor Henry Irving's production of Hamlet that would spark a lifelong friendship and working relationship between them. In 1878, Stoker married Florence Balcombe before moving to London, where he would work for the next 27 years as business manager of Irving's influential Lyceum Theatre. Between his work in London and travels abroad with Irving, Stoker befriended such artists as Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Hall Caine, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1895, having published several works of fiction and nonfiction, Stoker began writing his masterpiece Dracula (1897) while vacationing at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in Cruden Bay, Scotland. Stoker continued to write fiction for the rest of his life, achieving moderate success as a novelist. Known more for his association with London theatre during his life, his reputation as an artist has grown since his death, aided in part by film and television adaptations of Dracula, the enduring popularity of the horror genre, and abundant interest in his work from readers and scholars around the world.