Vampire fiction

Vampire fiction covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires.

The best known work in this genre is of course Bram Stoker's gothic novel Dracula. It was not, however, the first. Myths and legends of blood-imbibing creatures capable of transmogrification predate the novel form. The immediate antecedent of Dracula is Sheridan le Fanu's classic of the genre, Carmilla. This in turn owes more than a little to John William Polidori's The Vampyre; this work was contemporaneous to Lord Byron's poem The Giaour which also treats on this subject.

More recent proponent of this school of fiction include Richard Matheson and Anne Rice.