Abraham Stoker (1847-1912), better known by his pen name Bram Stoker, was an Irish theatre manager, writer, novelist and Freemason. He became famous as the author of Dracula (1897), an epistolary Gothic horror novel widely considered a landmark in vampire literature. The work deeply influenced future representations of fictional vampiric characters, and Stoker came to be regarded by many as "the father of vampire fiction".
Under the Sunset was Bram Stoker's first collection of short stories. It is a collection of eight stories for children with 33 illustrations by W. Fitzgerald and W. V. Cockburn.
The collection features illustrated fairy tales intended for children, though they are also praised for their dark fantasy elements and are recognized for their role in the development of fantasy literature. The stories, which include The Shadow Builder and The Rose Prince, explore themes of good and evil, often in a Land Under the Sunset, a magical realm glimpsed in dreams. In the titular story Under the Sunset, which we offer to our readers today, angels watch over a peaceful land called "Under the Sunset" (a fair and beautiful country, unseen by human eyes in waking life, where angels watch over the sleeping spirits of the human world), but eventually, the "children of death" try to enter and corrupt the land, with the angelic child Chiaro tasked to help the righteous and hide from the wicked.
