Varney the Vampire, Volume I
2003
First Published
3.06
Average Rating
554
Number of Pages
Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood was a Victorian era serialized gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer (alternatively attributed to Thomas Preskett Prest). It first appeared in 1845–47 as a series of cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls". The story was published in book form in 1847. It is of epic length: the original edition ran to 876 double-columned pages divided into 220 chapters. Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words. Despite its inconsistencies, Varney the Vampire is more or less a cohesive whole. It introduced many of the tropes present in vampire fiction recognizable to modern audiences to this day.
Avg Rating
3.06
Number of Ratings
65
5 STARS
12%
4 STARS
18%
3 STARS
42%
2 STARS
18%
1 STARS
9%
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Author
Thomas Peckett Prest
Author · 5 books
Thomas Peckett Prest, also known as Thomas Preskett Prest, was a British hack writer, journalist and musician. He was a prolific producer of penny dreadfuls. He is now remembered as the co-creator with James Malcolm Rymer of the fictional Sweeney Todd, the 'demon barber' immortalized in his The String of Pearls. He has also been associated with the authorship of Varney the Vampire, now more often thought to be the work of Rymer. He wrote under pseudonyms including Bos, a takeoff of Charles Dickens' own pen name, Boz. Before joining Edward Lloyd's publishing factory, Prest had made a name for himself as a talented musician and composer.
