Running Out of Soil

2 December 2004 · London Review of Books

Terry Eagleton

Bram Stoker Estate account

Estate summary

Terry Eagleton places Paul Murray’s biography of Bram Stoker within the traditions of Irish Gothic writing. He connects the genre’s unsettled houses, threatened property and anxious inheritances with the insecurity of Ireland’s Protestant Ascendancy, reading Dracula’s dwindling supply of native soil through that historical lens. Eagleton welcomes Murray’s thorough research and the information his biography brings together, while questioning its resistance to theoretical interpretation. His review also considers the novel’s combination of modern recording technology with older supernatural beliefs, and the gap between its literary weaknesses and its enduring imaginative force. These are Eagleton’s critical readings, rather than a statement of Stoker’s documented intentions.

Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books, volume 26, number 23, 2 December 2004. Complete publisher review inspected. This original Estate account attributes critical interpretations to Eagleton; it does not adopt his speculative biographical claims. The copyrighted review is linked rather than reproduced.

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Cover of Paul Murray’s From the Shadow of Dracula, 2004. — Paul Murray, From the Shadow of Dracula (Jonathan Cape, 2004).Jonathan Cape book cover, reproduced by The Observer / The Guardian.