Varney The Vampire (The Feast Of Blood)

Preface

Varney The Vampire or The Feast Of Blood is a Victorian era serialized tale by James Malcom Rymer (alternarively attributed to Thomas Preskett Prest). It first appeared in 1845-47 as a series of cheap pamphlets known as ''penny dreadfuls''. The story was published in book form in 1847. Its lentgh is massive. The original edition ran to 876 double-columned pages divided into 220 chapters. Altogether it consists of nearly 667.000 words. Varney The Vampire was originally published in 3 volumes and included 109 chapters. This edition includes only 93 chapters. During the Victorian era the authors of ''penny dreadfuls'', whose target readership was the working class, were paid according to how many words they wrote for each chapter. That explains the story's epic length. Despite its inconsistencies, Varney The Vampire is more or less a cohesive text. It introduced many of the tropes that are present in vampire fiction that are recognizable by the modern reader such as the fangs, the double puncture wounds on the victim's neck, the hypnotic powers and the superhuman strength. Also, this is the first example of ''the sympathetic vampire'', a vampire who detests his condition but is nonetheless a slave to it. The story now belongs to the public domain. I hope you enjoy reading it. Please, read, vote and comment. Thank you.   

The unprecedented success of the romance of "Varney the Vampyre," leaves the Author but little to say further, than that he accepts that success and its results as gratefully as it is possible for any one to do popular favours.

A belief in the existence of Vampyres first took its rise in Norway and Sweden, from whence it rapidly spread to more southern regions, taking a firm hold of the imaginations of the more credulous portion of mankind.

The following romance is collected from seemingly the most authentic sources, and the Author must leave the question of credibility entirely to his readers, not even thinking that he his peculiarly called upon to express his own opinion upon the subject.

Nothing has been omitted in the life of the unhappy Varney, which could tend to throw a light upon his most extraordinary career, and the fact of his death just as it is here related, made a great noise at the time through Europe and is to be found in the public prints for the year 1713.

With these few observations, the Author and Publisher, are well content to leave the work in the hands of a public, which has stamped it with an approbation far exceeding their most sanguine expectations, and which is calculated to act as the strongest possible incentive to the production of other works, which in a like, or perchance a still further degree may be deserving of public patronage and support.

To the whole of the Metropolitan Press for their laudatory notices, the Author is peculiarly obliged.

London Sep. 1847

                                           

                                           ''Art thou a spirit of health or goblin damned?''

                                                                    Shakespeare, Hamlet