The French filmmaker and magician Georges Méliès (1861–1938) is the subject of various written works, including biographies, essays, and monographs. The literature about him is abundant and spans many decades and languages, including English, French, Italian, Spanish, and German. Frank Kessler, a professor of media history, believes Méliès is arguably the most written about early filmmaker. Conversely, his name often appears in the titles of works not necessarily because his films are discussed but rather to signify the concept or time period of early cinema. Works in this bibliography have been reviewed in magazines or journals or are included in annotated bibliographies by Stéphane Tralongo or Elizabeth Ezra.

French film historians wrote pioneering, if constrained, works about Méliès between the 1940s and 1960s. Later, descendants of his and Anglosphere film historians wrote authoritative monographs and specialist works began to appear about his writings, magic, theater, film studios, film colorization, editing, and international reception. Conferences about Méliès held at the Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle suggest three phases in his scholarship. A conference in 1981 that studied his position in early cinema created debates between older and younger historians, such as Jean Mitry and André Gaudreault, respectively. A theoretical framework developed by Tom Gunning and Gaudreault, the "cinema of attractions", influenced a 1996 conference that studied the cultural contexts that shaped the motifs in his films. A conference in 2011 studied his attitudes toward an even wider array of contexts. Between these conferences, exhibition catalogs with materials related to the films, magic shows, paintings, and caricatures of Méliès have advanced his scholarship.

The descendants of Méliès are large contributors to his scholarship. His granddaughter Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, who grew up with him after her mother's death, began archiving his films and related materials in 1949. The archivist Henri Langlois of the Cinémathèque Française assisted her, and she founded the association Les Amis de Georges Méliès with her husband in 1961 to formalize the work. Her son Jacques Malthête expanded upon her work by cataloguing the films of Méliès across publications through the late 1970s and 1980s. From the 1980s onwards, Malthête-Méliès hosted or initiated the international conferences about Méliès that allowed scholars to refine their opinions of him. The publications of her son Malthête, daughter Anne-Marie Quévrain, and cousin Marie-Hélène Lehérissey in the bulletin of Les Amis de Georges Méliès have "inspired several generations of scholars", as Kessler writes.

1920s–1960s

An article written with the assistance of Méliès. Describes the construction, size, and evolution of his two film studios in Montreuil, as well as the equipment they kept. Argues he is the pioneer of "cinematic theatrical entertainment".

One of the earliest books about Méliès. Contains a biography, select plot summaries, an autobiographical text that Méliès wrote in the third-person, and many illustrations. As it was written when his filmography contained more gaps, it misidentifies some of his films.

A monograph that draws from many documents and oral accounts. Though an unavailability of sources required it take shortcuts, it is still considered a pioneering study. Reprints a selection of texts by Méliès, chosen alongside Pierre Lherminier. Reprinted in 1970.

A catalog of Georges Méliès, an exhibition hosted June 7 – September 22, 1961, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, to celebrate the centennial of his birth. Contains an introduction by Henri Langlois and contributions from Jacques Deslandes and Madeleine Malthête-Méliès. Addresses the writings and drawings of Méliès.

A book that surveys Méliès and questions assumptions about him. Includes as an appendix a rare text about him from a program of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin. The professor Elizabeth Ezra believed that although later scholarship surpassed the book, it still generated useful information.

1970s

A biography Malthête-Méliès began drafting in 1971, at first with her uncle André. Draws from her intense relationship with Méliès as well as archives of his work and contains some emphasis on his love life. Republished in 1995 by Ramsay and in 2011 as a revised edition.

The first English-language book about Méliès. Contains a biography, an analysis of the themes and production techniques in his films, an overview of the film career of his brother Gaston, and many illustrations, some from private collections. Argues that his stop trick influenced experimental film and that his personal life inspired his scenarios; the theme of innocent versus seductive women in his films was drawn from his first wife Eugénie Génin and mistress Jehanne d'Alcy. Challenges the traditional dichotomy between him and the Lumière brothers by arguing that he too filmed trains, beaches, and harbors.

An article that contextualizes the films of Méliès within the history of the , a French theatrical genre. Reprinted in 1983 as a chapter of Film Before Griffith, a book edited by John L. Fell.

A book divided into three parts: "The Artist's World", "The Career of Georges Méliès", and "The Films of Georges Méliès". Studies his films within their historical and artistic context. Includes much information about the content of his lost ones and detailed plot summaries and production notes concerning his surviving ones. In a review of the book, Jay Leyda commends Frazer's account of Star Film's downfall and states that he "is not distracted by the enormous difference between the quantity [of films] produced and the relatively few that remain". Ezra believed the book occasionally contained outdated information but was among the most useful about Méliès.

1980s

A reference book that was written by examining the films of Méliès through a Moviola. Consists of a filmography that recreates a Star Film catalog of French productions. Provides filming locations, detailed descriptions, and US and UK release titles, where applicable, of his surviving films.

A book in a monographic series about filmmakers. Recites the themes and motifs in the films of Méliès. Republished in 2009 by .

Proceedings of an international conference of the same name supported by descendants of Méliès and hosted August 6–16, 1981, at the Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle (CCIC) to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the association Les Amis de Georges Méliès. Each contribution focuses on a different aspect, and those by André Gaudreault, Pierre Jenn, Jacques Malthête, and Jean Mitry offer different opinions on film editing as it relates to Méliès. Malthête argues that the stop trick was not convincing enough on its own, so Méliès used editing techniques alongside it.

A short book that uses two installments in the short film series The Dreyfus Affair to argue that Méliès was capable of using cinematic techniques rather than solely theatrical.

A book that interprets lost Méliès films using descriptive texts from film catalogs, trade journals, and legal repositories. Assisted in identifying some of his lost films.

An article that studies the technical, economic, and aesthetic implications surrounding how women in Élisabeth and Berthe Thuillier's workshop colorized the films of Méliès. Argues that because it made each print distinct, the colorizing of his films imparted textual instability, as in how the formats of his film screenings and their live music varied.

An essay that proposes a revisionist history of early cinema. Argues against a teleological view of film history in which the filmography of Méliès is categorized as either being theatrical or narrative and instead suggests a hybrid. Reprinted multiple times.

A reference book that surveys the films of Méliès and creates a theoretical framework to understand them.

An article that criticizes the term "primitive" as a descriptor for early cinema. Cites an editing style that Méliès used to compliment his fixed camera angle. Describes the dichotomy between him and the Lumière brothers. Reprinted in 1990 as a chapter of Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, a book edited by Thomas Elsaesser.

1990s

A catalogue of A Trip to the Movies: Georges Méliès, Filmmaker and Magician (1861–1938), an exhibition hosted June 29 – September 8, 1991, at the George Eastman House. Contains studies of Méliès, by Roland Cosandey and Yuri Tsivian, and a translation of a forum about him hosted by the Commission de recherche historique of the Cinémathèque Française. Tsivian describes the reception of his films and filmmaking style in Russia.

A book that contains a brief overview of the life and work of Méliès as well as many illustrations.

A book that reprints a few articles in the form of essays. Contains a biography of Méliès, detailed information about his filmmaking techniques, a filmography, his poems and drawings, and many colorized illustrations.

Proceedings of Georges Méliès et le deuxième siècle du cinéma, an international conference hosted August 13–22, 1996, at the CCIC to celebrate the centennial of cinema in France. Reanalyzes Méliès through the framework of "cinema of attractions", a concept developed by André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning. Contains a large bibliography of works about him selected by Frank Kessler and contributions about his rediscovery in later life or experimentation with the fourth wall. Ezra comments that many essays use his films "as little more than a pretext for discussing other subjects".

2000s

A monograph with a biography of Méliès and an analysis of the special effects, narrative strategies, and genres in his surviving films. Uses contemporary theory to argue that it is a myth that his films were mere childlike fantasies devoid of narrative structure. Analyzes the flying women in his films using feminist theory and finds that he satirized colonial expansion that resulted from an obsession with quicker modes of transportation. Robin Buss believes the book underplays his theatrical influences, though Victoria S. Steinberg and M. Yacowar were convinced of its thesis.

A catalog of an exhibition of the same name hosted April 26 – September 1, 2002, at the Espace EDF Electra, Paris, to celebrate the centennial of A Trip to the Moon. Summarizes what is known about Méliès and his films. Contains contributions that discuss how his films developed alongside the magic lantern, phantasmagoria, and Pepper's ghost, chronologize the construction of his film studios, and study how his trick effects worked and were received.

An article that studies the kinematography of Méliès using the discovery that he sometimes assembled different filmstrips. Describes his kinematography as adherent to the values and techniques of magic.

A catalog of Georges Méliès, magicien du cinéma, an exhibition hosted April 16 – August 2, 2008, at the Cinémathèque Française. Annotates documents or objects belonging to the Cinémathèque that are related to Méliès. Contains a filmography by Jacques Malthête, a revised version of previous ones, alongside a bibliography of published Méliès filmographies.

2010s

An article that places the studios of Méliès within the history of glass and steel architecture and studies how this architectural style influenced his filmmaking process. Brian R. Jacobson includes a revised edition of the article in his 2015 book Studios Before the System.

A book that summarizes the literature about Méliès to provide an overview of him. Contains illustrations, is written in plain language, and is accompanied by three DVDs.