Marsh's Library Exhibits

1. Letter of recommendation from Dr Shaw

Bram Stoker first visited Marsh’s Library on Wednesday, 4 July 1866.

As required by the Library, Stoker presented a letter of recommendation. This testimonial is a hastily-scrawled note on a piece of scrap paper and may have been requested from his college tutor, Dr Shaw, with little or no notice. Stoker would not be the first – or last – student to impose upon a tutor in such fashion.

The note reads:

I recommend Abraham Stoker as a fit & proper person to read in Marsh’s Library.

G F Shaw

July 2. 66
Citation: 1. Letter of recommendation from Dr Shaw,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#489

2. Stoker Signs the Visitors’ Book

Stoker signed the Visitors’ Book on 4 July 1866 and gave his address as 4 Orwell Park in Rathgar on the south-side of the city.

The Library has a record of visitors stretching back to 1828.

Citation: 2. Stoker Signs the Visitors’ Book,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#490

3. Readers’ Register, 1866-67

The Library discovered in 1863 that it had been the victim of theft, and for the next twenty years it kept a record of books issued to each reader. This consisted of the date, the reader’s name, short details of the author or title, and the shelf mark of the requested volume.

The Readers’ Register allows us to trace what Bram Stoker read on his seven visits to the Library. The page on display shows what he read on his second (6 July) and third (7 July) visits.

Citation: 3. Readers’ Register, 1866-67,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#491

4. A volume of pamphlets shelved at H3.3.13

Requested on: 4, 6, and 7 July 1866.

On his first visit to Marsh’s Library, Stoker requested a volume of seven cheap, topical pamphlets published separately between 1685 and 1688. They tell a story of religious tensions and anxieties.

Several were produced by Anglicans who feared for the very existence of their church under the newly-crowned Roman Catholic king of Britain and Ireland, James II. Other texts speak to suspicions of treachery from within the Protestant community. For example, John Gother, the author of A Papist Mis-represented and Represented (pictured), was an Englishman who converted to Rome in the 1660s, took Holy Orders, and subsequently became one of the most prolific defenders of the Roman Catholic church.
Citation: 4. A volume of pamphlets shelved at H3.3.13,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#492

5. A volume of pamphlets shelved at H3.3.11

Requested on: 6 July 1866.

During his second visit to the Library, Stoker requested a volume which consists of eleven cheap pamphlets. When the volume is read from start to finish, the tracts form a sequential history of Ireland from a fake Catholic plot of 1678 to the famous siege of Derry in 1688-9.

George Walker's A True Account of the Siege of London-Derry (pictured) is a very well researched history of the siege. Its strength lay in its vivid reporting of the sufferings of the garrison.

The siege was so significant that, even today, every child in Northern Ireland knows the name of George Walker. Bram was very conscious of sectarian tensions in his own times, and privately mocked the ‘staunch’ politics of Orangemen in Belfast when he visited the town in 1878.

Citation: 5. A volume of pamphlets shelved at H3.3.11,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#494

6. Atlas Geographus: Or, a Compleat System of Geography, Ancient and Modern, 5 vols, (London, 1711-17).

Requested on: 6 and 7 July 1866.

The London-based geographer and cartographer Herman Moll (1654?-1732) produced an epic five-volume geography of the world between 1711 and 1717. Atlas Geographus contained a map of each country, but the main focus of the five volumes was on a very detailed description of the physical geography, peoples, customs, and history of each territory.

Stoker called up only the second of the five volumes, which contains the entries on France, Iberia, Italy, Hungary and Turkey. In the light of Stoker’s most famous novel, Dracula, it is intriguing that this volume has an entry (with accompanying map) on Transylvania as a contested frontier area between Hungarian and Turkish power in south-central Europe.

Citation: 6. Atlas Geographus: Or, a Compleat System of Geography, Ancient and Modern, 5 vols, (London, 1711-17).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#495

7. John Harris, Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca: Or, a Compleat Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1705).

This book contains comprehensive accounts of voyages across the world from the sixteenth century onwards. Harris’s main aim was to show the supremacy of Britain over other European powers.

Harris dedicated the book to Queen Anne (1702-14). He believed that ‘Our own Religion, Government and Constitution is, in the Main, much preferable to any...abroad.’

Harris believed the greatest hero of early English exploration was Sir Francis Drake (d.1596), of whom there was a striking, copper-plate engraving towards the start of the volume.

At the time of his death in 1912, Stoker owned a 1744 edition of Harris’s Travels.
Citation: 7. John Harris, Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca: Or, a Compleat Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1705).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#496

8. Philipp Clüver, Italia Antiqua (Leiden, 1624).

Requested on: 6 July 1866.

An overview of the geography, history and literature of classical Italy culled from a multitude of original works in Latin and Greek. The book contains striking maps of Italy and its regions, one of which is displayed here.

Citation: 8. Philipp Clüver, Italia Antiqua (Leiden, 1624).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#497

9. Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia: or, an universal dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2 vols, (Dublin, 1740).

Requested on: 7 July 1866.

This encyclopedia was first published in London in 1728 by Ephraim Chambers (1680?-1740). It contains a wealth of geographical and historical information, but it is the only item consulted by Stoker which contained any discussion of science, mathematics, or medicine. It is also the only book he requested which sits comfortably within the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, rather than the Wars of Religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Citation: 9. Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia: or, an universal dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2 vols, (Dublin, 1740).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#498

10. John Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern; Translated into Verse, From Homer, Ovid, Boccace & Chaucer (London, 1700).

Requested on: 7 and 13 July, and 5 and 15 November 1866.

In this book, the English poet John Dryden (1631-1700) reproduced excerpts from the works of Homer, Ovid and Boccaccio: the greatest poets respectively of the Greek, Latin and Italian languages. However, Dryden reserved his greatest praise for the Englishman Geoffrey Chaucer (d.1400).

Dryden proclaimed his admiration for Chaucer in stark terms: ‘no Man ever had, or can have, a greater Veneration for Chaucer, than myself. I have translated some part of his Works [from medieval English], only that I might perpetuate his Memory’. In drawing attention to Chaucer’s influence upon Edmund Spenser and John Milton, Dryden praised the genius of English poetry.

At the time of his death in 1912, Stoker owned a volume which contained 11 original Dryden plays published between 1677 and 1691.

Citation: 10. John Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern; Translated into Verse, From Homer, Ovid, Boccace & Chaucer (London, 1700).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#499

11. Samuel Purchas (ed.), Purchas His Pilgrimes. In Five Bookes, 4 vols, (London, 1625).

Requested on: 13 July 1866.

The geographer Samuel Purchas (d.1626) compiled this highly influential book during twenty years of collecting oral and written accounts of travels in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It was based in part on the manuscripts of the celebrated geographer Richard Hakluyt (d.1616).

Purchas His Pilgrimes was strongly patriotic and anti-Catholic. It was at pains to stress English travellers' early progress across the world. Purchas dedicated his opus to Charles, Prince of Wales (d.1649), and claimed the achievements of English merchants and mariners outlined in his book were for ‘the admiration of the present, and amusing (if not amazing) of the future.’

As a young man, Stoker was an admirer of the British Empire and its role in sowing the seeds of peace, prosperity and justice across the globe. His interest in this book was probably due to its resonances with widely-held views on the civilising mission of the British Empire in his own day.

Citation: 11. Samuel Purchas (ed.), Purchas His Pilgrimes. In Five Bookes, 4 vols, (London, 1625).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#500

12. Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in foure Books Contayning the Chorographie & Historie of the whole World (London, 1682).

Peter Heylyn (1599-1662) produced a historical geography of the world which asserted England's rights over the Americas, India, and Africa. It was a work of significance in its day, which went through at least eleven editions in the thirty years after its first publication in 1652.

Heylyn was explicit about the fact that he wrote as both an Englishman and a member of the Church of England. He acknowledged that 'as I have been zealous to Record the Actions, so have I been careful to assert the Rights of the English Nation’.

There is a mention of the historic figure of Vlad Dracula in Heylyn’s Cosmographie, but in 1866 Stoker was almost certainly only interested in this volume because of the stories it told of the heroism and ‘derring-do’ of early English explorers.
Citation: 12. Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in foure Books Contayning the Chorographie & Historie of the whole World (London, 1682).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#501

13. The Works of that Famous English poet, Mr. Edmond Spenser (London, 1679).

Requested on: 13 July 1866.

The London-born administrator Edmund Spenser (1552?-99) came to Ireland in 1580 as a secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey, the man charged with putting down the Second Desmond Rebellion (1579-83) against English power.

According to Andrew Hadfield, Spenser may have been present on 9 November 1580 when Grey ordered the slaughter of 600 Spanish and Italian troops who had surrendered at Dún an Óir on the Dingle peninsula in the south-west of Ireland. Spenser amassed lands in Munster under the plantation which followed the defeat of the rebellion.

This book contains all of Edmund Spenser’s poetical works as well as the infamous prose ‘A View of the Present State of Ireland’ which advocated stern repression of resistance to English rule in Ireland.

Citation: 13. The Works of that Famous English poet, Mr. Edmond Spenser (London, 1679).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#502

14. The Workes of Our Ancient and learned English poet, Geffrey Chaucer (London, 1602).

This beautiful, black-letter folio edition compared the medieval English poet Chaucer to the great poets of the ancient world and the great poet of the Italian vernacular, Petrarch. As the editor Thomas Speght (d.1621) commented, ‘It were a labor worth commendation, if some scholler, that hath skill and leisure, would confer Chaucer with those learned Authors, both in Greek and Latin, from whom he hath drawn many excellent things.’

That Stoker consulted two panegyrics to Chaucer in Marsh’s Library (see item 10) must be significant, especially as at the time of his death he owned a 1687 and a 1721 edition of the great poet’s Works.

The page on display is from the start of ‘The Knight’s Tale’.
Citation: 14. The Workes of Our Ancient and learned English poet, Geffrey Chaucer (London, 1602).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#503

15. Edmund Waller, Poems, &c. Written Upon Several Occasions, and to Several Persons (London, 1664).

Requested on: 5 November 1866.

This volume by the English royalist Edmund Waller (1606-87) contains a number of touching love poems, as well eulogies of literary figures, such as Ben Jonson, which sometimes veer into the mawkish and hyperbolic.

Waller’s collection has a strong tinge of English nationalism. ‘Upon a War with Spain, and a Fight at Sea’ rejoiced in the victories of the English ‘Eagles’ over the ‘heedless lambs’ of Spain during the 1650s. ‘To the King On His Navy’, dating from 1636, praised the Royal Navy for bringing peace, law and justice not merely to England, but to the whole world.

These patriotic sentiments chimed with Stoker’s heartfelt enthusiasm about the benign, civilizing role of the British Empire.

Citation: 15. Edmund Waller, Poems, &c. Written Upon Several Occasions, and to Several Persons (London, 1664).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#504

16. A volume of pamphlets shelved at G3.4.13.

Requested on: 5 November 1866.

This volume contains eleven separate pamphlets published between 1678 and 1687. They testify to a strong sense of Tory politics and Anglican religion on the part of the original seventeenth-century collector.

Shown here is John Dryden’s poem Absalom and Achitophel, which projected Britain’s crises of the 1680s back into the biblical story of Absalom’s treasonous rebellion against King David. It is intriguing to note again (see item 10 above) the presence of Dryden in Stoker’s reading matter.

Much of the volume is given over to religious and political topics. A Discourse Concerning the Object of Religious Worship accuses Rome of ‘Pagan Idolatry’ in worshiping ‘Saints and Angels.' There are also strident attacks on the Mass and several tracts against fundamental points of Catholic doctrine, including transubstantiation. Even in the nineteenth century, these were unusual topics for the eighteen-year-old Stoker to wish to consult.
Citation: 16. A volume of pamphlets shelved at G3.4.13.,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#505

17. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson (London, 1616) and The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, 2 vols, (London, 1640).

Requested on: 15 November 1866.

Bram consulted three volumes of the Workes of the great English poet and playwright, Ben Jonson (1572-1637). Jonson excelled at vernacular comedy and satire, and a rather pugnacious temperament meant that he was often in trouble with the law. However, his scholarly erudition ensured that he gained a certain social standing.

The publication of the handsome folio edition of Jonson’s Workes in November 1616 consolidated his position as England's foremost living author, Shakespeare having died earlier that same year. In 1640, three years after Jonson’s death, two volumes of his post-1616 works were published in London.
Citation: 17. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson (London, 1616) and The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, 2 vols, (London, 1640).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#506

18. G. Downes, Dublin University Prize Poems: With Spanish and German Ballads &c (Dublin, 1824).

Requested on: 15 November 1866.

As an undergraduate at Trinity College Dublin, Bram Stoker was a fan of the challenging and controversial poetry of Walt Whitman.

Bram’s interest in the truly awful poetry of Downes is perplexing. Might it have enjoyed a certain, ironic fame among devotees of bad writing in mid-nineteenth century Dublin?

Citation: 18. G. Downes, Dublin University Prize Poems: With Spanish and German Ballads &c (Dublin, 1824).

,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#507

19. M. Gordon, Poems (London, 1836).

Bram’s interest in the poetry of Gordon is just as perplexing as his interest in Downes' poems.

Mr. Gordon’s Poems of 1836 sometimes attains the heights of mediocrity but is, for the most part, content to wallow at the level of the genuinely atrocious. The worst of these compositions is perhaps ‘To a Friend, who requested a List of Theological Books’.
Citation: 19. M. Gordon, Poems (London, 1836).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#518

20. A volume of pamphlets shelved at K4.4.27

Requested on: 30 March 1867.

A volume of eleven long-forgotten poetic and dramatic works by minor late-Elizabethan and early-Stuart writers.

In their day these cheap, poorly-printed texts were part of a vibrant culture of literary production in London. They were soon consigned to oblivion by the passage of the years and changing literary tastes.

The first item (pictured) is a long poem of 1606 by Nathaniel Baxter. It claims to be a synthesis of Christian doctrine and Greek philosophy, but is little more than a pedestrian attempt by Baxter to secure patronage from the family of the Elizabethan poet, Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86).

It is hard to imagine what drew Stoker to these fragile, unlovely texts in 1867, but his close friend, the Shakespearean scholar Edward Dowden, came to Marsh’s to read this volume in 1875 and 1876. It is surely likely that Stoker mentioned these pamphlets to Dowden in some context.
Citation: 20. A volume of pamphlets shelved at K4.4.27,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#512

21. William Ramesey, Astrologia Restaurata; Or, Astrologie Restored (London, 1653).

Requested on: 30 March 1867.

The physician and astrologer William Ramesey (1627-76) was born in Westminster to a Scottish father and English mother but, believing himself to have Egyptian ancestors, changed his surname to approximate the names of the ancient Pharaohs.

Ramesey published a number of books and pamphlets defending the accuracy and usefulness of astrology. This 1653 text was his most sustained defence of what he called the 'Liberal Science...vulgarly known by the Name of Astrologie'. He laid out the principles and practice of astrology in order to demonstrate that it was little different from astronomy.

Citation: 21. William Ramesey, Astrologia Restaurata; Or, Astrologie Restored (London, 1653).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#513

22. A volume of pamphlets shelved at O2.5.20.

Requested on: 30 March 1867.

This volume contains four pamphlets for and against astrology published between 1601 and 1654. The image displayed is from the section of A Treatise Against Judicial Astrologie which argues that the study and practice of palmistry is a fraud.
Citation: 22. A volume of pamphlets shelved at O2.5.20.,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#514

23. A volume of pamphlets shelved at L1.4.29

Requested on: 30 March 1867.

The 17 pamphlets in this volume were published between 1655 and 1668 and are concerned with the nefarious deeds of the Jesuits, who were seen by many contemporary Britons as the most dangerous and fanatical of all Roman Catholics.

The title of the 1667 Pyrotechnica Loyolana was a weak pun upon the name of the founder of the Jesuits (Ignatius Loyola) and the classical god of fire, Ignatius. The author assured his readers that the Jesuits had started the Great Fire of London in September 1666.
Citation: 23. A volume of pamphlets shelved at L1.4.29,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#515

24. Jeremy Collier, The Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical and Poetical Dictionary, 4 vols,(London, 1701).

Requested on: 30 March 1867

Stoker’s friend John J. Lawlor read this best-selling encyclopedia on numerous occasions, but it was only on his final visit to the Library that Bram called up these four volumes. Bram may have been browsing idly, but he was clearly alerted to the book by his friend Lawlor.

Citation: 24. Jeremy Collier, The Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical and Poetical Dictionary, 4 vols,(London, 1701).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#516

25. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments of Matters Most Special and Memorable, Happening in the Church: With an Universal History of the Same, 3 vols, (London, 1684).

Requested on: 30 March 1867.

First published in 1563, this account by John Foxe (d.1587) of the persecution of Christians by Rome was for centuries one of the three most influential titles in the English-speaking world: the King James Bible and Shakespeare being the other two. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (as it was commonly known) was central to the creation of a national identity which saw Britain as separate from, and always under attack by, continental Europe.

Stoker only requested the first of the three volumes, which details the classical and medieval atrocities of Rome against the Godly. Stoker knew Foxe’s Book of Martyrs from his childhood, and probably called up this volume as a rare edition of something with which he had long been familiar.
Citation: 25. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments of Matters Most Special and Memorable, Happening in the Church: With an Universal History of the Same, 3 vols, (London, 1684).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits, accessed February 24, 2026,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/exhibits/show/haunting#517

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