Dracula

Beginning life as a bedridden child unable to walk, Bram Stoker grew up to lead a dual career as a novelist and as the business manager for the actor Henry Irving. His most celebrated novel, Dracula, played a large role in popularizing the vampire genre. Dracula was later plagiarized in the classic 1928 film Nosferatu; Stoker's widow was so incensed by the unauthorized use of her husband's work that she tried to have every existing copy of the film destroyed.