Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood is a Victorian-era serialized gothic horror story variously attributed to James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. It first appeared in 1845–1847 as a series of weekly cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls". The author was paid by the typeset line, so when the story was published in book form in 1847, it was of massive length: the original edition ran to 876 double-columned pages and 232 chapters. Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words.
It is the tale of the vampire Sir Francis Varney, and introduced many of the tropes present in vampire fiction recognizable to modern audiences.
Story
Setting
The story has a confused setting. While ostensibly set in the early eighteenth century, Many of today's standard vampire tropes originated in Varney: Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the necks of his victims, comes through a window to attack a sleeping maiden, has hypnotic powers, and has superhuman strength. Unlike later fictional vampires, he is able to go about in daylight and has no particular fear of either crosses or garlic. He can eat and drink in human fashion as a form of disguise, but he points out that human food and drink do not agree with him.
In the thirteenth episode of the 1991 television series Dracula: The Series, Varney treated Dracula (going by Alexander Lucard in the series) for blood poisoning. He was played by Sam Malkin.
In the sixth episode of the TV series Penny Dreadful (2014), Abraham Van Helsing gives a copy of Varney the Vampire to Victor Frankenstein, explaining that the story is more truth than fiction and that the mysterious creature the series' characters are pursuing is a vampire.
Varney is one of the main characters in Strange Practice (2017) and its sequels by Vivian Shaw.
The 2017 film The Man Who Invented Christmas shows Charles Dickens reading it at the time that he was developing the supernatural elements of his novella A Christmas Carol; however, Varney was not published until 1845, and the film's action is set in 1843.
In 2020, the fifth season episode 'The Stakeout' of BBC anthology series Inside No. 9 features PC Varney, named after the character and played by Reece Shearsmith.
In 2021, Varney appears as a character in Castlevania season 4, as an alter ego of Death (voiced by Malcolm McDowell), used to operate beneath notice to advance his goals.
Authorship
The story was published by Edward Lloyd, whose policy was not to allow authors to put their name on their published work. Due to this there is disagreement over the authorship of many works published by his company. Varney the Vampire is generally considered to have been co-written by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Preskett Prest. However, E. F. Bleiler has argued that Rymer is most likely the author due to the differences in how he wrote dialogue compared to Prest. Louis James also considered Rymer the most likely author, citing a piece of the manuscript in his handwriting.