From age-old folktales to bestselling novels and Hollywood blockbusters, vampires have haunted our imaginations for centuries.

Perhaps this is because they inhabit an intriguing world between cold reason and insatiable desire. Or perhaps we just like a good jump scare.

But whatever the reasons for our fascination, no vampire looms larger in popular culture than Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, and no one has illuminated his dark world more than Dr. Elizabeth Miller.

Dr. Miller’s name has been synonymous with Dracula scholarship for decades. She helped reveal that Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel was not simply a gothic horror story, but a cultural mirror reflecting Victorian fears of contagion, sexuality and the unknown.

But she never set out to become the scholarly version of a vampire hunter. That would come later in her career. She had distinguished herself as a teacher, editor and researcher long before she encountered the Count.

Dr. Miller began her academic journey as a student at Memorial University’s Parade Street Campus. She earned her bachelor of arts degrees (classics and education) and her master’s degree at Memorial. Then she spent time teaching at various high schools around the province, including time as a teacher and principal in Joe Batt’s Arm, Fogo Island.

She returned to Memorial in 1970 to teach with Junior Division, the groundbreaking unit comprised of experienced teachers working to help first-year students make the transition to university.

When Junior Division was disbanded in the 1980s, Dr. Miller moved to the English department, teaching and commencing work on her PhD. By the time she received her doctorate in 1987, she had already made a valuable contribution to the study of Newfoundland and Labrador literature. And she made another vital addition to that literature by editing and publishing the major works of her father, Ted Russell, the celebrated humourist and author of the beloved Pigeon Inlet plays.

But while teaching a class on the Romantic poets, Dr. Miller’s interests swerved towards the gothic. She read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. One monster led to another. And when she finally read Dracula for the first time, her scholarly pursuits headed in a new direction.

 

Elizabeth Miller was named Memorial University professor emerita in 2004. Photo from Memorial University Archives.

 

For decades, one of the most persistent misconceptions in vampire lore was that Bram Stoker’s Dracula character was based on the life of the fifteenth-century Romanian ruler Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula.

But through meticulous archival work, Dr. Miller dispelled this myth. Stoker’s character was the product of pure imagination. He named the character Dracula simply because he found the word exotic and scary.

With this false historical link severed, Dr. Miller’s findings reshaped how scholars and enthusiasts alike understood the origins of one of literature’s most enduring monsters and what he revealed about Victorian culture.

She published several influential books, including Reflections on Dracula and Dracula: Sense and Nonsense. She also co-edited Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula. And these works became essential resources for both academics and fans, setting the standard for modern Dracula studies.

In recognition of her exceptional research, she received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dracula Society in London.

In 1995, the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, in Romania, granted her the title Baroness of the House of Dracula.

Yet despite all the recognition, she remained grounded in Newfoundland and Labrador. She continued to edit and publish anthologies of poetry and stories from this province that may have been overlooked or forgotten without her dedication.

And she was always admired for her generosity as a teacher and mentor. She won Memorial University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1992 and was named professor emerita in 2005.

Dr. Miller always admitted she had come to the study of vampires late in her career. But she also became a recognized authority at a time when vampires were all the rage in popular culture. And she frequently appeared in documentaries and on television and radio to discuss the topic.

In this way, she arrived on the scene at exactly the right moment and became one of Memorial’s ambassadors to the world.