Now in London with his new bride and a new career, Bram Stoker threw himself headlong into the acting world. At the same time, he began actively pursuing his second career as a writer, publishing the novel The Snake's Pass in 1890.

Stoker had cut his teeth on an earlier nonfiction work written during his clerical days, with the utterly dull title Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, and a collection of children's fairytales entitled Under the Sunset, published in 1881. The macabre themes of Stoker's fairytales were often criticized as being too frightening for children, but the tone of the book was an early illustration of Stoker's interest in unearthly topics and the boundaries of mortality.

The same year his first novel was published, Stoker began writing Dracula, an endeavor that would take him seven years to prepare for publication.