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Florence Stoker: Guardian of Dracula

A forgotten woman, an unauthorized film & the legal battle that protected Dracula’s legacy.

By Cristina Schek

March 13^th, 2026

Everyone knows Dracula. Far fewer people know Florence Balcombe Stoker, the woman who protected its legacy.

After Bram Stoker’s death in 1912, Florence became the literary executor of his estate. A decade later, when the German film Nosferatu adapted Dracula without permission, she pursued a difficult cross-border legal battle that ended in a landmark victory. In 1925, the court ordered the destruction of the film’s prints and negatives.

Some copies survived. That is why Nosferatu still exists today.

But before its survival as cinema, there was Florence Stoker, insisting that the story had an author and a guardian.

This history became the starting point for my work Self-Portrait as Florence Balcombe (Guardian of Dracula), currently on view in 'Line of Beauty': Young Masters People’s Choice Award Winners Exhibition at The Exhibitionist Hotel in South Kensington, London. View exhibition here.

As a Transylvanian artist based in London, I often return to the mythology surrounding Dracula. But this work turns away from the monster and toward the woman who defended the story.

The Imaginative Whirlpool

Bram Stoker described the Carpathians as an “imaginative whirlpool” a place where superstition gathers and stories cling to landscape.

As a Transylvanian artist, I have spent a lifetime watching people project their fears and fantasies onto my birthplace. That whirlpool is not just atmosphere. It is inheritance.

My work does not try to escape the myth. It asks who gets to shape it, inherit it, and protect it.

In this story, the answer is not Dracula.

It is Florence Stoker.

Florence Stoker

Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe, later Florence Stoker, lived at the centre of the literary and theatrical world that produced Dracula.

Born in Dublin in 1858, she moved within artistic and literary circles from an early age. Before marrying Bram Stoker, she was courted by Oscar Wilde. In 1878 she married Stoker and moved to London, where Bram became manager of the Lyceum Theatre under the celebrated actor Henry Irving.

The Lyceum was one of the great cultural centres of Victorian London. Writers, actors and artists moved constantly through its orbit, and Florence was part of that world. Some scholars have suggested that Irving’s commanding stage presence helped shape Stoker’s imagination when he created Count Dracula, suggesting the vampire was formed as much by theatre as by folklore.

When Bram Stoker died in 1912, Florence became literary executor of his estate.

That role would define her place in cultural history.

Portrait of Florence Stoker by Burne-Jones

The Lawsuit

In 1922, the German film Nosferatu adapted Dracula without permission. Names were changed and details altered, but the story was unmistakably Bram Stoker’s.

Florence Stoker recognized that immediately.

Rather than letting the infringement pass, she pursued legal action against the filmmakers. It was a costly and complex battle, stretching across borders at a time when international copyright law was far less settled than it is now.

In 1925, she won.

The court ordered the destruction of all prints and negatives of Nosferatu.

Some copies survived and resurfaced decades later, which is why the film is now celebrated as one of the masterpieces of silent cinema. But before that survival, there was Florence Stoker, insisting that the story had not been severed from its author.

Her role is often treated as a footnote in the history of Dracula.

In truth, she was one of the earliest and fiercest defenders of literary copyright in cinema history.

Self-Portrait as Florence Balcombe (Guardian of Dracula) (2019)

This story became the starting point for my work Self-Portrait as Florence Balcombe (Guardian of Dracula).

Self-Portrait as Florence Balcombe Stoker (Guardian of Dracula), 2019. Archival pigment print on canvas with applied vintage emerald-green necklace. Mixed media. Framed size: 46.5 x 38.5 cm. Unique.

This work combines archival pigment print on canvas with a vintage emerald-green necklace physically attached to the surface. The necklace transforms the portrait into an object rather than an image alone, introducing a tangible relic within the work. Suspended across Florence’s body, it suggests inheritance, guardianship and the material weight of a story defended.

The emerald-green necklace carries its own Victorian charge. Its colour evokes jewellery, ornament, theatrical display, glamour and danger, while also introducing a subtle tension between beauty and toxicity. Attached directly to the canvas, it binds the portrait to the Gothic world Florence Stoker helped preserve and marks the work as an object of memory, protection and authorship.

The portrait reframes the Gothic away from the vampire and toward the woman who defended the story. Rather than centring Dracula as the mythic figure, it turns toward Florence Stoker as guardian, witness and protector.

The surface is scratched and fractured like damaged celluloid, echoing the attempted destruction of Nosferatu and the contested status of images that survive against the odds. These ruptures are not decorative. They carry the memory of erasure, authorship and legal struggle.

The result is a portrait of Florence, but also a meditation on inheritance: who holds a story, who protects it, and what remains after attempted disappearance.

Florence Balcombe Stoker: Timeline

1858 – Florence Balcombe is born in Dublin.
1870s – She moves within literary circles and is courted by Oscar Wilde.
1878 - She marries Bram Stoker and moves to London, where Bram becomes manager of the Lyceum Theatre under Henry Irving.
1880s–1890s The Lyceum becomes one of Victorian London’s great cultural centres. Some scholars suggest Irving’s commanding stage presence, especially as Mephistopheles in Faust, helped shape Stoker’s imagination when creating Count Dracula.
1897 – Dracula is published.
1912 – Bram Stoker dies. Florence becomes literary executor of the estate.
1922 – F. W. Murnau releases Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula.
1922–1925 – Florence Stoker pursues a copyright lawsuit.
1925 – She wins; the court orders the destruction of Nosferatu prints and negatives. Some survive, and the film later becomes a silent-cinema classic.

2019 - Transylvanian artist Cristina Schek creates Self-Portrait as Florence Balcombe Stoker (Guardian of Dracula), returning Florence Stoker to the centre of the story.
2023 - The inquiry expands into Armour Studies: threshold figures, riders and watchful presences.
2025 - It opens further into Solar Tides, where the Gothic gives way to daylight, clarity, and exposure.

Nosferatu Today

Despite the court order demanding its destruction, several copies of Nosferatu survived. The film is now widely considered one of the masterpieces of silent cinema.

Its survival gives the story an unusual afterlife. Florence Stoker fought to defend authorship and copyright; history, meanwhile, preserved the evidence of the conflict.

That tension is part of what continues to make the story so compelling: a film almost erased, a novel fiercely defended, and a woman who refused to let the story drift free of its name.

Armour Studies (2023)

In Armour Studies, I extend the idea of protection.

These works are not illustrations of Dracula, but studies in vigilance: figures at the threshold, watchful presences, guardians who appear before or beside the story itself.

One evokes Jonathan Harker entering Transylvania, that charged moment of arrival when landscape begins to turn into legend. Others appear in armour or on horseback, as if stationed at the outer walls of the myth.

Placed alongside Florence Stoker, they ask the same question in another form:

Who protects the story?

Because every story has its guardian.

Solar Tides (2025)

If the Gothic lives in darkness, Solar Tides lives in daylight.

This series continues the movement away from fear and toward illumination. Not naïve brightness, but a light that sees clearly. A light that does not deny darkness, but refuses to belong to it.

Within the wider body of work, Solar Tides becomes a counterpoint to Dracula’s nocturnal mythology. It suggests another register of power: optimism as discipline, clarity as resistance, sunlight as a way of seeing.

Dracula fears the sun, but stories survive because someone stands in the light to protect them.

Florence Stoker did.

Line of Beauty (2026): Exhibition Details

Self-Portrait as Florence Balcombe (Guardian of Dracula) is currently on view in Line of Beauty at The Exhibitionist Hotel, South Kensington, London.

Presented by Young Masters / Cynthia Corbett Gallery, the exhibition runs from 15 January to April 2026 and is installed across the hotel’s ground-floor public spaces within its Georgian interiors.

Cristina Schek is th First Prize Winner of the 2025 Brownhill Young Masters People’s Choice Award.

Featured work
Self-Portrait as Florence Balcombe (Guardian of Dracula), 2019

Related works
Armour Studies (2023)
Solar Tides (2023)

Venue
The Exhibitionist Hotel
8–10 Queensberry Place
South Kensington
London SW7 2EA
United Kingdom

Opening hours
The exhibition may be viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is open to both hotel guests and visitors.

View exhibition here

Together, Self-Portrait as Florence Balcombe Stoker (Guardian of Dracula), Armour Studies, and Solar Tides trace a passage from defence to illumination. What begins with Florence Stoker’s act of guardianship opens into a wider meditation on protection, memory, and survival: on the figures who stand at the threshold of a story, and on the light required to carry it forward.