See buying choices for this item to see if it's one of the millions that are eligible for Amazon Prime.

27 used & new from $9.10

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Search inside another edition of this book

Tell the Publisher! I�d like to read this book on Kindle Don�t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

Encyclopedia of Hell (Hardcover)

by Miriam Van Scott (Author) "Abbadon, the Hebrew word for "destruction," is the biblical dwelling place of the dead found in both the Old and New Testaments..." (more)
Key Phrases: Twilight Zone, Don Juan, Night Gallery (more...)

3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.

7 new from $26.20 20 used from $9.10

Also Available in:	List Price:	Our Price:	Other Offers:
Hardcover			3 used & new from $30.93
Paperback (1st)	$18.95	$12.89	41 used & new from $9.32

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits

by Carol K. Mack

3.7 out of 5 stars (43) $11.56

Dictionary of Angels: Including the Fallen Angels

by Gustav Davidson

4.3 out of 5 stars (66) $14.28

The History of Hell

by Alice K. Turner

4.5 out of 5 stars (21) $14.96

The New Encyclopedia of the Occult

by John Michael Greer

4.6 out of 5 stars (25) $19.77

Demonology

by King James I.

3.7 out of 5 stars (3) $13.25

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Miriam Van Scott outpaces Dante...a Thomas Guide to the Dark Side." --Detour magazine

"With entries ranging from Dante's Inferno to the 1994 noir film Dark Angel: The Ascent, Van Scot's hellacious handbook entertains as it guides readers through a cultural history of Hell." --Publishers Weekly

"Fascinating reading...Van Scott's fine research and treatment of the material enables the reader to grasp specific points with great depth. All libraries will do well to add such a contemporary title." --Library Journal

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
The first and only book to organize the available wide-ranging, cross-cultural history of Hell and its various interpretations, "Encyclopedia of Hell" offers depictions of Hades from film, television, music, classical literature, religion, art, myth, and theater.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Hardcover: 308 pages
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (August 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 031218574X
ISBN-13: 978-0312185749
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,644,028 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.

First Sentence:
Abbadon, the Hebrew word for "destruction," is the biblical dwelling place of the dead found in both the Old and New Testaments. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Twilight Zone, Don Juan, Night Gallery, Middle Ages, Jesus Christ, Don Giovanni, Roman Catholic, The Pilgrim, Garden of Eden, Old Testament, The Great Divorce, City of God, Dai Mokuren, Freddy Kruger, Grim Reaper, Land of No Return, Stephen King, Christian Bible, Dante's Inferno, Dark Tower, Gospel of Nicodemus, Iron Maiden, Vault of Horror, Land of Darkness, New Testament

New!
Concordance | Text Stats

Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 87 books:

The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso) by Dante Alighieri on 36 pages
Divine Comedy (Oxford World's Classics) by Dante Alighieri on 36 pages
Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) by John Milton on 12 pages
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis on 7 pages
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Shambala Pocket Classics) by Chogyam Trungpa on 6 pages

See all 87 books this book cites

2 books cite this book:

The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology) by Stanton Marlan in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Dark Archetype by Denise Dumars in Back Matter

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	31% buy Dictionary of Angels: Including the Fallen Angels 4.3 out of 5 stars (66) $14.28
	26% buy A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits 3.7 out of 5 stars (43) $11.56
	24% buy the item featured on this page: Encyclopedia of Hell 3.5 out of 5 stars (13)
	10% buy The New Encyclopedia of the Occult 4.6 out of 5 stars (25) $19.77

Explore similar items

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

(What's this?)

Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).

demons(37)

angels(24)

folklore(19)

occult(16)

folklore and mythology(13)

demonology(14)

angel(14)

reference(13)

mythology(11)

creatures(8)

monsters(8)

Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search

No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

13 Reviews

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.5 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

121 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terribly disappointing..., March 25, 2005

By	DesertKnight (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Hell (Paperback)

This book was sorely disappointing. I expected a work that contained serious entries on various hell/afterlife-related topics-something that could be used as a reference. Instead, this book is a hodgepodge of entries on everything from Babylonian mythology to popular movies like Flatliners. Just to give you an idea of what's actually in this book, there are entries on "Gift Novelties," "Country Music," "Movie Merchandising," "Jokes," and Stephen King's "Rose Madder." Notable missing entries include Virgil (Dante's guide through the Inferno), Ugolino (one of the most lasting images from the Inferno, and the basis of many modern poems, including one by Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney), Pandaemonium (the capital city of Hell from Milton's Paradise Lost), Neutral Angels (those who didn't take sides in Lucifer's war on God, and who were damned for not siding with God), Beezelbub (a Biblical demon), Baal (identified with Beezelbub in the Bible), and Sin. I stopped looking at that point, or I'd have a much longer list. The entries that are in this book leave a lot to be desired. "Satan" gets a column and a half, while "Saturday Night Live" gets more than two. One of the longest entries is for Clive Barker, who gets two and a half pages, and who is one of the people listed in her Acknowledgements. The entries are very simplistic and often either wrong or so lacking in substance as to be next to useless.

Unless your primary interest is pop-culture versions of Hell in the late 20th century, and you don't mind getting less useful information than you could find on Google in about thirty seconds, pass on this book.

Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Cum Grano Salis, October 25, 2000

By A Customer

Over all, this is a decent book. However, be aware that there are some inaccuracies, possibly based on the author's personal biases. For example, Olodumare is not an underworld deity in the Yoruba pantheon, and neither is Obatala an underworld judge. Also, Wotan (Germanic) and Erlik (Siberian) are not deities who fell "out of grace" with a higher ('good') divinity. There are many more such examples. Either the author has deliberately skewed the information, or her sources are inaccurate. If you are buying this book in order to do serious research, be prepared to cross reference with other sources--preferably the originals.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a bit displeasing, January 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Hell (Paperback)

Perhaps, my expectations of this book were too high. I was looking for an amusing, yet somewhat historically thorough book. It did indeed have many underworld entities I had never heard of before. However, there were also ridiculous entries that in my opinion, were wasting space: comic books, video games, David Letterman (for saying, "this show's going to hell"). What is that? The only entry I immediately recall not finding is "Diablo"... they at least could have put it under video games... I mean, they had "Doom".

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 13 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars good not great
I feel like the view of Miriam van Scott's book is too condemning of most thing. She places in Hell Hollywood movies which we all know are works of fiction. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Francine Price

1.0 out of 5 stars Ridiculously Bad, covered such topics as t-shirts and bubble gum cards but absolutely nothing of real interest.
This book is a perfect example of pop culture bubblegum pap. It deals with such topics as bubblegum cards and t-shirts but either doesn't mention or very, very superficially such... Read more

Published 12 months ago by Alex Fuentes

4.0 out of 5 stars A real contact fromHell
Well, it is just what it says, a nice center of information about hell, the number of qoutes are amazing, i cpuld be a little bit more detalied but its enough to start an... Read more

Published 17 months ago by Gabriel Campos D�az

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful, but needs more hell stuff
Though I found some of this product useful and I use it for the purposes that I need to use it for. the amount of movies, and modern stuff listed in it including cheesy b budget... Read more

Published 24 months ago by Victoria Ehli

5.0 out of 5 stars A Note from the Author
I'm not sure what motivated the review that contends much is "missing" from this book or if that reviewer was somehow confused, but I wanted to set the record straight. Read more

Published on July 14, 2006 by M. L Vanscott

5.0 out of 5 stars Its Media - If you like Media . . .
I first found this book on the shelves of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Bible study reference section. Read more

Published on April 19, 2005 by Barry Parker

5.0 out of 5 stars the entries are highly entertaining
Encyclopedia of Hell by Miriam Van Scott (Author) is another collection in dictionary style format (much like the book of angels, demons, and fairies reviewed earlier on the site... Read more

Published on June 7, 2004 by imdateless

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, But Not Definative
Miriam Van Scott's Encyclopedia of Hell is chock full of interesting definitions, descriptions, and anecdotes concerning many different aspects of devils, demons, occultists, and... Read more

Published on July 8, 2002 by Matthew S. Schweitzer

5.0 out of 5 stars ARIANA LUJAN(NOTHING)
IT WAS AN AMAZINE BOOK AND I LOVED IT, I THINK THE WHOLE WORLD SHOULD READ IT, BUT ITS KINDA HARD TO READ BUT JUST GET BACK ON AND READ ITS, GOOD

Published on May 21, 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly intriguing. Scholarly, yet easy to read; fascinating!
By a writer who really knows how to write readable, interesting, flowing material! From its first entry---"Abbadon" (Hebrew for "destruction")---to its... Read more

Published on September 3, 1998 by Leon Fletcher

› See all 13 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; }

Customer Discussions

Beta (What's this?)

New! See all customer communities, and bookmark your communities to keep track of them.

This product's forum (0 discussions)

	Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
	No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight

Start a new discussion

Topic:

First post:

Receive e-mail when new posts are made

Prompts for sign-in

[Cancel]

Guidelines

Active discussions in related forums

Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
religion What are Atheists doing in a Religion Community?	667	2 minutes ago
religion Oklahoma GOP resolution blames economic woes on gays, secularism, abortion, "debauchery" and more!	33	2 minutes ago
christianity The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Truth Restored (4)	3459	6 minutes ago
religion I think the 'Why do the religious hate gays?' Thread just got deleted	558	11 minutes ago
christianity 2 Thess. 2:3-12..The Lawless men send by satan	1	13 minutes ago
christianity Sin of Sins	5751	18 minutes ago
religion The Atheist Argument	5502	22 minutes ago