Bram Stoker most famous novel. Stoker enjoyed the United States, where Irving was popular. With Irving he was invited twice to the White House, and knew William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Stoker set two of his novels there, using Americans as characters, the most notable being Quincey Morris. He also met one of his literary idols, Walt Whitman. Stoker visited the English coastal town of Whitby in 1890, and that visit was said to be part of the inspiration for "Dracula". He began writing novels while working as manager for Henry Irving and secretary and director of London's Lyceum Theatre, beginning with
Bram Stoker his fiction as an outlet for his sexual frustrations. In 1912, he demanded imprisonment of all homosexual authors in Britain: it has been suggested that this was due to self-loathing and to disguise his own vulnerability. Possibly fearful, and inspired by the monstrous image and threat of otherness that the press coverage of his friend Oscar's trials generated, Stoker began writing "Dracula" only weeks after Wilde's conviction. According to the "Encyclopedia of World Biography", Stoker's stories are today included in the categories of "horror fiction", "romanticized Gothic" stories, and "melodrama." They are classified alongside other "works of popular fiction" such