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 the Shroud" (1909). He had a writer's interest in the occult, notably mesmerism, but despised fraud and believed in the superiority of the scientific method over superstition. Stoker counted among his friends J. W. Brodie-Innis, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and hired member Pamela Colman Smith as an artist for the Lyceum Theatre, but no evidence suggests that Stoker ever joined the Order himself. The short story collection "Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories" was published in 1914 by Stoker's widow, Florence Stoker, who was also his literary executrix. The first film adaptation of "Dracula"