Google Doodle Celebrating Bram Stoker’s Birthday With ‘Dracula’ Recreations

This is the latest of Google’s Google Doodles, which take the place of the normal Google logo on the Google home page and celebrate different aspects of pop culture.  

The concept came about in 1998, before Google had formed, when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin altered the company logo to indicate that they were attending the Burning Man festival in Nevada, according to the official About Doodles page. The trend picked up in 2000 after a Bastille Day doodle became popular with users, and they have become a more regular occurrence over the past decade.

Digital Spy reports that Stoker was born in Clontarf, Dublin, in 1847, and died in 1912. Throughout his life he studied at Trinity College while also working as a civil servant in Dublin Castle. He wrote 19 books, the fifth of which was the now legendary “Dracula.”

The man behind the modern vampire character spent years conducting research throughout Europe to capture the folklore and mythology of vampires. It wasn’t until after his death that the work paid off. “Dracula” became one of the most famous horror novels of all time, and it was adapted into film, television and other books pieces, and popularizing the vampire sub-genre of horror.

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen bought the original 541-page manuscript of “Dracula” titled “The Un-Dead,” which had been believed to be lost for decades. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s in a barn in northwestern Pennsylvania, according to Digital Spy.

The 100-year anniversary of Stoker’s death was commemorated with a new edition of “Dracula” that featured an introduction from Irish writer Colm Tóibín