Varney the Vampire: Impact and Legacy

Varney the Vampire: Key Points

• Varney the Vampire was published as a penny dreadful serial between 1845 and 1847, serving as a crucial bridge between early vampire literature and later works like Dracula.

• The story spans 232 chapters following Sir Francis Varney’s encounters with the Bannerworth family, beginning with the famous scene of Varney crashing through Flora’s bedroom window.

• Varney is portrayed as a deeply conflicted character who expresses remorse for his condition and occasionally helps those he has harmed, giving him revolutionary psychological depth.

• Despite his remorse, Varney remains fundamentally evil through his repeated predatory attacks, particularly targeting young women, and the text maintains his moral accountability.

• Scholars interpret Varney as representing aristocratic decay, class parasitism, and Victorian anxieties about sexual transgression and how historical violence haunts the present.

• Varney established the template for psychologically complex vampires and introduced many genre conventions, remaining essential for understanding vampire evolution in literature and film.

Introduction

Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood, is one of the most important but least known books in the history of vampire fiction. This long Gothic story was published as a penny dreadful serial from 1845 to 1847. It introduced readers to Sir Francis Varney, a vampire who would help shape the literary archetype that would eventually lead to Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1879) over fifty years later. Modern readers may find the work’s excessive length and melodramatic style challenging, but Varney is an important link between the aristocratic vampire of earlier Romantic poetry and the complicated, psychologically nuanced undead beings of later Victorian literature. The serial’s overwhelming popularity among working-class readers showed how much the public was becoming interested in vampires and helped set many of the rules that would become standard in the genre.

Varney Overview

The literary scene that gave us Varney the Vampire was one where popular publishing was growing quickly, and more and more working-class Brits were learning to read. Readers who couldn’t afford expensive three-volume novels loved penny dreadfuls, which were called that because they cost one penny per weekly installment. These magazines were very popular because they had Gothic horror, crime stories, and stories about the supernatural. They filled a need for exciting stories that people had satisfied with oral storytelling and ballads in the past. Varney came out after earlier vampire stories like John Polidori’s The Vampyre and the anonymously published The Vampyre: A Tale (1819) fragments. These stories showed the vampire as a smart, aristocratic person instead of a mindless monster. The author, probably James Malcolm Rymer but maybe Thomas Preskett Prest, used these earlier works as inspiration and added elements from the larger Gothic tradition started by writers like Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis.

Varney the Vampire is a long story with 232 chapters. It tells the story of Sir Francis Varney and the Bannerworth family, especially Flora Bannerworth, who Varney becomes interested in as a vampire. The story starts with one of the most famous scenes in vampire literature: Varney crashes through Flora’s bedroom window during a storm, his eyes shining with supernatural hunger and his fangs dripping with excitement. As the serial’s plot goes on, Varney attacks the Bannerworth family and others over and over, dies and comes back to life many times, and becomes caught up in different plots involving hidden treasures, family secrets, and elaborate lies. The story is set up in a way that makes sense for its serial publication, with repetitive episodes meant to keep readers interested over months and years of installments, as well as many subplots that sometimes go against what was said earlier in the story.

Varney the Vampire is often thought of as one of the first important vampire novels in English literature. The story centers on the tragic character Sir Francis Varney and shows how people in Victorian England were dealing with many different problems, especially those related to class and home life (Cameron, 2023). Rymer’s depiction of vampires resonates with nascent concerns regarding sanitation, social reform, and the transformative experiences of the urban impoverished, thereby establishing a basis for contemporary vampire culture (Geer, 2025).

Sympathetic Villian

Varney is a particularly interesting character in the history of vampire literature because he is portrayed as deeply conflicted and sympathetic, even though he does terrible things. Varney, on the other hand, often feels sorry for his condition and the pain he causes. His character is different from the purely evil vampires in folklore or the coldly aristocratic Lord Ruthven from Polidori’s story. He speaks extensively about the hardships and misfortunes that have plagued his life, and he even makes efforts to assist those he has harmed in the past. The narrative shows that he can think morally and even be kind, which makes it hard to put him in a simple villain category. The text shows that Varney was once a person and hints that he became a vampire after betraying and killing a royalist during the English Civil War. This provides readers a sad backstory that makes them want to understand him, if not forgive him. This level of psychological depth was groundbreaking for vampire fiction and would change how later writers considered their undead characters to be tortured souls instead of just monsters.

Even though Varney can feel negative about what he does and sometimes does beneficial things, he is still evil in his actions and their effects. He repeatedly violates the sanctity of homes and bodies, especially young women, in scenes that are full of sexual threat. Victorian readers would have seen these as violations of the most sacred boundaries of feminine purity and domestic safety. His attacks leave people feeling drained, weak, and traumatized, and the story makes it clear that his feeding is both a physical assault and a kind of spiritual corruption. Even when Varney helps his former victims or feels ashamed about what he did, he always goes back to being a predator. This suggests that his monstrous nature is stronger than his human conscience. The text never fully absolves Varney of his crimes. It says that even though readers may feel sorry for him because of his cursed state, he is still morally responsible for choosing to live at the expense of others.

Analysis

Scholars and critics have put forth multiple interpretations regarding Varney‘s significance within the framework of Victorian society and its prevailing anxieties. Numerous readers have interpreted Varney as a representation of aristocratic decline and the exploitative dynamic between the old nobility and the rising middle class, with his literal consumption of the Bannerworth family symbolizing the way inherited privilege depletes the vitality of industrious citizens. His repeated resurrections and apparent invincibility may symbolize Victorian anxieties regarding the endurance of antiquated social structures despite revolutions and reforms intended to eradicate them. Some other readings of Varney see him as a symbol of sexual transgression and forbidden desire. His nighttime visits to young women’s bedrooms show fears about female sexuality and male predation that polite Victorian society couldn’t talk about openly. The fact that Varney was made through betrayal and violence and was cursed for his role in regicide during the Civil War shows that people are worried about the violent roots of political order and how crimes from the past still affect the present. The interaction between Varney’s aspirations and the societal norms imposed on the Bannerworths exemplifies the underlying gender roles and class conflicts characteristic of the period (Pérez & Silva, 2019).

During the Victorian era, people became more and more interested in the Gothic. Varney the Vampire fits into this trend by telling a sensational story that criticizes the norms of the time. The novel’s exploration of class dynamics is particularly relevant, as it mirrors the class conflicts and domestic challenges of its era. Commentators have observed that Rymer’s text reflects concerns regarding the implementation of social reform, especially in relation to marriage and family structures (Cameron, 2023).

Even though Varney the Vampire isn’t as well-known as Dracula and other later vampire stories, its effect on vampire literature that came after it can’t be overstated. Varney set the standard for vampires as complicated, psychologically rich characters that could make readers feel both fear and sympathy, going beyond the simple monsters of folklore. The serial brought to light or made popular many things that would become common in vampire stories, such as the vampire’s aristocratic demeanor, his hypnotic powers, his ability to appear in dreams, and the dramatic scene of him coming through a bedroom window. Many of the tropes that people think of when they think of Dracula, like using wooden stakes, the vampire’s superhuman strength, and the focus on keeping innocent young women safe from being seduced by vampires, were first used or made popular in Varney.

The book’s commercial success showed that there was a large audience for longer vampire stories, which helped to establish the vampire as a serious literary topic instead of just folklore or short Gothic stories. Aspects introduced in Rymer’s work, including the vampire’s romantic appeal and tragic components, have become essential to the genre (Hackenberg, 2009). In addition, its serialized format and sensationalist themes set the stage for later gothic stories by creating conventions that can still be seen in popular culture today (McDowell, 2012).

Conclusion

Varney the Vampire is a testament to the strengths and weaknesses of popular literature from the Victorian era. Its long length, repetitive plot, and sometimes contradictory story details show how difficult it is to publish a series and how commercial pressures affected the making of penny dreadfuls. However, this flawed and sprawling text contains a truly original take on the vampire figure, one that saw the dramatic and philosophical possibilities of making a monster who could think, feel, and question his existence. The picture of Sir Francis Varney as both a victim and a victimizer, a nobleman and a predator, and a penitent and a recidivist gave readers a character that was truly complex and went beyond simple moral categories. Even though modern readers might find the Victorian prose style and melodramatic excesses hard to read, Varney is still a must-read for anyone who wants to know how the vampire changed from a demon in folklore to the more complex characters that are in movies and books today.

References

Anonymous. (1819). The vampyre: A tale. In Lord Byron, Mazeppa: A poem (pp. 79-100). John Murray.

Cameron, B. (2023). Domestic plots and class reform in varney the vampire. Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, 4(2), 47-62. https://doi.org/10.46911/vjxp7684

Geer, G. V. (2025). “the poor privilege of all”: suicide in varney the vampire. Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, 7(1), 53-66. https://doi.org/10.46911/qmey7006

Hackenberg, S. (2009). Vampires and resurrection men: the perils and pleasures of the embodied past in 1840s sensational fiction. Victorian Studies, 52(1), 63. https://doi.org/10.2979/vic.2009.52.1.63

McDowell, S. (2012). Penny dreadfuls. The Encyclopedia of the Gothic. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118398500.wbeotgp001

Pérez, F. J. S. and Silva, A. M. d. (2019). Two hundred faces of a vampire: lord ruthven’s influence on vampire culture. Abusões, 9(9). https://doi.org/10.12957/abusoes.2019.40680

Polidori, J. (1819). The vampyre: A tale. The New Monthly Magazine, 1(63), 195-206.

Rymer, J. M. (1847). Varney the vampire; or, The feast of blood. E. Lloyd.

Stoker, B. (1897). Dracula. Archibald Constable and Company.