Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party

by Bram Stoker

Snow The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party is a collection of short stories by Bram Stoker the world famous author of Dracula. A train traveling across Scotland in the middle of winter is brought to a halt by the falling snow. The passengers, all members of a "theatrical touring party" build a fire in one of the carriages and huddle around it to keep from freezing to death. With nothing to do but wait they decided to entertain each other by telling stories. While some of these stories are tragic and some of them are humorous all of them are highly entertaining.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Irish-born Abraham Stoker, known as Bram, of Britain wrote the gothic horror novel Dracula (1897).

The feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornely Stoker at 15 Marino crescent, then as now called "the crescent," in Fairview, a coastal suburb of Dublin, Ireland, bore this third of seven children. The parents, members of church of Ireland, attended the parish church of Saint John the Baptist, located on Seafield road west in Clontarf with their baptized children.

Stoker, an invalid, started school at the age of seven years in 1854, when he made a complete and astounding recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years."

After his recovery, he, a normal young man, even excelled as a university athlete at Trinity college, Dublin form 1864 to 1870 and graduated with honors in mathematics. He served as auditor of the college historical society and as president of the university philosophical society with his first paper on "Sensationalism in Fiction and Society."

In 1876, while employed as a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote a non-fiction book (The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, published 1879) and theatre reviews for The Dublin Mail, a newspaper partly owned by fellow horror writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu. His interest in theatre led to a lifelong friendship with the English actor Henry Irving. He also wrote stories, and in 1872 "The Crystal Cup" was published by the London Society, followed by "The Chain of Destiny" in four parts in The Shamrock.

In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde. The couple moved to London, where Stoker became business manager (at first as acting-manager) of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years. The collaboration with Irving was very important for Stoker and through him he became involved in London's high society, where he met, among other notables, James McNeil Whistler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the course of Irving's tours, Stoker got the chance to travel around the world.

The Stokers had one son, Irving Noel, who was born on December 31, 1879.

People cremated the body of Bram Stoker and placed his ashes placed in a display urn at Golders green crematorium. After death of Irving Noel Stoker in 1961, people added his ashes to that urn. Despite the original plan to keep ashes of his parents together, after death, people scattered ashes of Florence Stoker at the gardens of rest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker

Reviews

[blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a somewhat disappointing collection from Stoker where an acting troupe gets snowbound on a train and tells stories to pass the time. There are some shining moments, to be sure. The social stratification of performers is quite on-point and always amusing. One stand-out story has the acting troupe confessing to their sins in the last moment of life, with said confessions amounting to what we might call today "humblebrags". Another one by a PR Man (as we would call him today) is about a vainglorious client's insistence that (in the modern parlance) "no publicity is bad publicity", and where that goes.

There are good moments in all the stories, but not really a good shape to them. They don't tend to start strong or end strong. To their potential credit, they DO feel like actual stories related by actual people, but that's not necessarily the best storytelling. A little more artifice would've gone a long way.

STOKER BONUS: The first story, about how a stage manager (almost certainly Irving!) handles an obstreperous "cast of thousands" who insist on bringing their pets everywhere with them features an animal importer named "Ross"—selfsame Ross, one presumes, who provides the hero of Lair of the White Worm with his mongooses.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.65⭐

Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party (1908) is a collection of 15 short stories by Bram Stoker. Set in rural Scotland, where a party of travelling actors from a touring theater company who are trapped on a snowbound train are telling stories to each other to pass the time, the book is influenced by Stoker's years in the service of Sir Henry Irving.
Stoker spent over ten years working on these collections of short stories. According to the following announcement from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Stoker began working on Snowbound long before it was published in 1908.


Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, December 25, 189

Preface ✔️
The Occasion 2⭐
A Lesson in Pets 2.25⭐
Coggins's Property 3⭐
The Slim Syrens 2⭐
A New Departure in Art 3⭐
Mick the Devil 3⭐
In Fear of Death 2.5⭐
At Last 3⭐
Chin Music 3⭐
A Deputy Waiter 2⭐
Work'us 2.5⭐
A Corner in Dwarfs 2⭐
A Criminal Star 3⭐
A Star Trap" 3.5⭐
A Moon-Light Effect 3⭐

[J.F. Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting but interesting none the less. A touring theatre company trapped in a snow bound train take it in turns to tell stories from their lives, most with a theatrical slant. Some are better than others, it has to be said: Stoker's attempt to render lower class and Irish speech patterns is sometimes semi-comprehensible and there's often too much stage slang for easy reading. However, entirely worth it if only for the story about a jealous husband, a Harlequin and a star-trap. Now that had the makings of a seriously good story... Read it all in one sitting when I was 'snow bound' which helped!

[Mike Lisanke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stoker is a great writer and tells stories which flow and are very easy to read But many of them (in this collection) did Not Land with me. Not like Stoker's 2ns Novel e.g. So, your milage (like mine) may vary.

[Dane Cobain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snowbound is a rare but intriguing example of Bram Stoker's work, a book that's influenced by his many years in the service of renowned actor Sir Henry Irving. In it, a party of travelling actors are caught in the snow in rural Scotland, and they tell each other stories to while away the hours.

Ostensibly a short story collection, Snowbound draws on Stoker's rich set of experiences in the theatre, and some of the characters are no doubt influenced by real individuals.

Stoker tries to make them seem more authentic by writing their dialogue phonetically, including Scottish, Cockney and American accents, but this actually draws away from the plot - it can be so hard to translate that half of the time you have no idea what they're talking about. Thank goodness for footnotes, that's all I'm saying - he makes Irvine Welsh characters look literate!

[Susan Wands · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of short stories culled from Stoker's experience of touring as the man in charge of Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre. Bram, being Irish, writes some of the Irish accents out so exceedingly exact it makes the reading difficult. But it is an entertaining collection of stories written in Stoker's flourid fashion, with the crew and cast trading ghost stories, murder stories and regular theatre yarns of all sorts. Especially entertaining for those who follow Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, William Terriss or the rest of the Lyceum Theatre.