Although an invalid in early childhood—he could not stand or walk until he was seven—Stoker outgrew his weakness to become an outstanding athlete and football (soccer) player at the University of Dublin. After 10 years in the civil service at Dublin Castle, during which he was also an unpaid drama critic for the Dublin Mail, he made the acquaintance of his idol, the actor Sir Henry Irving (Irving, Sir Henry), and from 1878 until Irving's death 27 years later, he acted as his manager, writing as many as 50 letters a day for him and accompanying him on his American tours. Stoker's first book, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, a handbook in legal administration, was published in 1879.

Turning to fiction late in life, Stoker published The Snake's Pass, a novel with a bleak western-Ireland setting, in 1891, and in 1897 his masterpiece, Dracula, appeared. Written chiefly in the form of diaries and journals kept by the principal characters—Jonathan Harker, who made the first contact with the vampire Count Dracula; Mina, Jonathan's wife; Dr. Seward; and Lucy Westenra, a victim who herself became a vampire—the story is that of a Transylvanian vampire who, using supernatural powers, makes his way to England and there victimizes innocent people to gain the blood on which he lives. Led by Dr. Van Helsing, Harker and his friends, after many hair-raising adventures, are at last able to overpower and destroy Dracula. The immensely popular novel enjoyed equal success in several versions as a play and as a film.

Stoker wrote several other novels—among them The Mystery of the Sea (1902), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1904), and The Lady of the Shroud (1909)—but none of them approached the popularity or, indeed, the quality of Dracula.