📍15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, Dublin 3, Ireland
1847 – 1860“I was born in this house on Marino Crescent in Clontarf, a curved terrace facing the sea on Dublin's north side, the third of seven children. I was so sickly that I could not stand or walk until I was seven; doctors never found the cause. I spent those years in bed, looking out at the world from my window, and my mother, Charlotte, became my storyteller. She was a strong woman from Sligo, twenty years younger than my father, and she had lived through the cholera epidemic of 1832. She told me of plague carts, mass graves and people buried before they were dead, and of the old Irish legends of the dead who walk. My father, a quiet civil servant, had a well-stocked library I devoured. Then, quite suddenly, I recovered, and grew into a strapping athlete at Trinity College. I worked in Dublin Castle, reviewed plays, and moved to London to manage the Lyceum Theatre. But the shadows of that bedroom never left me, and years later I wrote Dracula. A plaque marks the house today.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today