The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead is a reference encyclopedia by religious scholar J. Gordon Melton, first published in 1994 by Visible Ink Press, covering vampire folklore, literature, film, and popular culture across an alphabetical arrangement of several hundred entries.
Overview
Written by Melton, head of the American chapter of the Transylvania Society of Dracula, the book gives equal weight to folkloric vampire traditions from around the world and to fictional and pop-cultural vampires, spanning figures from historical Vlad the Impaler to characters from Dracula, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Twilight series. It includes a vampire chronology and an extensive resources section, and covers real-world organisations connected to vampire lore and investigation, including describing Britain's British Occult Society as an "occult investigation bureau."
Editions
The book has been revised and expanded across several editions since its 1994 debut, with a second edition in 1999 and a third edition incorporating coverage of the Twilight franchise's rise in popular culture.
Reception
The book has been widely praised as one of the most comprehensive vampire reference works available, drawing positive reviews from Choice, Fate magazine, and the Journal of American Folklore, among others, and remains a commonly cited survey resource for researchers and writers working on vampire-related subjects. Some reader reviews have noted its 1990s origins mean it lacks coverage of more recent internet-era vampire culture.