1. Emily Gerard was a Scottish 19th-century author best known for the influence her collections of Transylvanian folklore had on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
17 Facts About Emily Gerard
1. 2.
Emily Gerard was born on 7 May 1849 at Chesters, Jedburgh, Scotland, the oldest daughter of Colonel Archibald Gerard of Rochsoles, Lanarkshire and Euphemia Erskine, daughter of the inventor Sir John Robison.
3.
Emily Gerard had three sisters and three brothers including General Sir Montagu Gilbert Gerard.
4.
Emily Gerard was descended from Alexander Gerard a philosophical writer, Archibald Alison a Scottish Episcopalian minister and writer, and Gilbert Gerard a minister of the Church of Scotland and theological writer.
5.
Emily Gerard's sister Dorothea, born on 9 August 1855 at New Monkland, Lanarkshire, was a novelist.
6.
The Gerard family lived in Vienna from 1863 to 1866, during which time Emily began a life-long friendship with Princess Marguerite de Bourbon, whose family had been friends with the Robisons since the Scottish exile of Marguerita's great-grandfather, Charles X She was home-schooled until she was 15, when she continued her education studying European languages at the convent of the Sacre Coeur at Riedenburg in Austria for three years.
7.
Emily Gerard wrote stories for Blackwood's Magazine, as well as reviewing French and German literature for The Times and Blackwood's.
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Mark Twain 8.
In 1879, Gerard began to write novels, with her first major work being a collaboration with her sister Dorothea under the joint pseudonym E D Gerard.
9.
In Salzburg on 14 October 1869, Emily Gerard married Ritter Miecislaus von Laszowski, a Polish cavalry officer serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army, who was 20 years her senior.
10.
Emily Gerard was joined by her sisters in 1870, following the death of their mother.
11.
The Emily Gerard brothers made contributions to the siblings' literary output, collectively adding up to nearly 60 books and novels.
12.
Emily Gerard used her time spent in Hermannstadt and Kronstadt to write about the culture and landscape of Transylvania.
13.
In 1897 Emily Gerard wrote to William Blackwood, of Blackwood's Magazine, asking to be introduced to the American author Mark Twain.
14.
When Blackwood obliged, Emily Gerard met and befriended Mark Twain, to whom The Extermination of Love is dedicated.
15.
On 11 January 1905 Emily Gerard died in Vienna, Austria where she and her husband had moved following his retirement from active service.
16.
However, it was felt that other members of Emily Gerard's family appealed more to the public as writers of novels.
17.
In 1905 obituaries for Emily Gerard published in both The Times and The Atheneum, her sister's Dorothea's wider appeal was remarked upon.