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The tale of the vampire has been with us since earliest times. The first recorded use of the Russian term for vampire (Upir) comes from a document dated 1047 AD which shows just how long the idea of the being that lives on the blood of others has been with us.

The vampire in literature has a long and storied history, if you'll excuse the pun. It is all but impossible to list every single book and story written about the subject over the years, due to the sheer magnitude of the material, but there are certain books that are accepted as being particularly important to the genre.

As far back as 1190, Walter Mapp wrote a piece called 'De Nugis Curialium' which included accounts of vampire-type beings in England. It is actually possible to download this piece online here.

Although not a book, the 1400's brought Vlad Tepes into being and he was the supposed inspiration for hundreds of vampire stories over the centuries. His history and a discussion about his impact on the novel 'Dracula' can be found at this resource.

Another inspiration for the vampire legend, Elizabeth Bathory, was arrested in 1610 for murdering hundreds of people and bathing in their blood. Her impact on vampire literature can be found here.

In 1610, Leo Allatius completed his vampyric work, 'De Graecorum hodie quirundam opinationabus', and in 1657, Fr. Francois Richard's work, 'Relation de ce qui c'est pass a Sant-Erini Isle de l'Archipel', made the leap that connected vampires to witchcraft.

1679 saw the arrival of Phillip Rohr's German vampire text, 'De Masticatione Mortourum'. This coincided with a huge rise in hysteria over vampires across Europe as a whole and, by 1734, the word 'vampire' (possibly taken from the German 'Vampir') had entered the English language and passed into literature.

Between 1744 and 1746 several earnest works upon the subject of vampires were released and, in 1797, Goethe published one of the most noted vampire poems, 'Bride of Corinth'. The poem can be read here. By 1800, Samuel Taylor Coleridge had written what is accepted as the first English language poem concerning vampires, 'Christabel'. You can read the poem here.

In 1813, Lord Byron published a poem called 'The Giaour' (found here, which dealt with a vampire encounter. Over the course of the 1800's many plays, poems and vampire short stories were published and the vampire legend became engrained in the public mind.

It is worth noting that Bram Stoker was born in this era (1847). In 1888, Emily Gerard published 'Land Beyond the Forest' and this was a great inspiration for Stoker's work.

In 1897, Bram Stoker published what has become the standard legend of

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