Stoker's style was arguably a product of his background in the theatre, working as business manager to theatre legend Henry Irving and running the Lyceum Theatre for twenty-seven years. Wynne posits that Stoker's melodramatic tendencies were directly influenced by his knowledge of Victorian theatre, "with all its theatrics and high emotions". The mysticism of the occult and the supernatural that Stoker expounds upon in "The Jewel of Seven Stars", Wynne argues, was inspired by the stage "magic" and innovations in staging that allowed for illusions to be performed in the theatre: "Stoker in his fiction… illusion in the service of the supernatural".