Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Penny Dreadfuls

Varney the Vampyre Rediscovered

Earlier in the month, I posted about “Varney the Vampyre,” perhaps the most notorious of the Victorian penny dreadfuls, and how I was seriously thinking about tackling the 1166-page tome that is the collected serial for the month of October. (Those weekly installments do add up!)

I also mentioned how impossible it was for decades to track down a copy of the novel, especially before the internet, and then after, once it was possible, how ridiculously expensive even the reprints had become. I had access to only a few chapters in ghost story anthologies and volumes of 19th century popular British fiction in my own library.

Then I found a cheaply-printed paperback (issued by Wordsworth Editions, based in the U.K.), perhaps 15 years ago, at the Strand Book Store in New York, and was thrilled to purchase it. However, the text is so closely printed, and in such a small font, that you’d have to have the eyes of an eagle to read it. Nevertheless I took up the challenge, hoping that my aquiline nose counts for something.

In the meantime, I searched on eBay and came across some library discards of the two-volume Dover reprint from 2015 (previously issued in 1972). I placed my order, and they arrived quickly and in remarkably satisfactory shape, as if no one had even read them! Of course, they’ve been laminated and there are the usual library markings, but I can deal with that.

This edition is on good paper and has all the illustrations, though, admittedly, the reproduction is not always of the finest quality, with parts of the individual letters murky or even missing. Also, the layout is in two columns on each page, in the manner of those Sherlock Holmes Strand reprints. Even so, having now switched over from the Wordsworth Editions, I have to say, it is surprisingly readable, even in bed, late at night, under drooping eyelids. Add in the fact that both volumes combined cost me less than $20, and I am as happy as a vampire in a blood bank.

Over the decades, whenever I mention “Varney” to anyone, they nearly always respond with a disbelieving laugh, as if they’re not sure they’ve heard me correctly. “VARNEY THE VAMPYRE???” So it was a comfort to me, when I brought it up over coffee last week, that my former newspaper editor, now retired, knew just what I was talking about. Then again, he also knew what I was talking about when I brought up “Killdozer.”

In terms of actual content, as I mentioned before, the lurid incident and overheated exclamations can pile up awfully fast. Also the sentimentality. But really, taking any page at random, it’s not much worse than your average Victorian novel. That’s not to say, cumulatively, “Varney” is going to add up to “Great Expectations” or “Vanity Fair!”

Collectively, “Varney” is credited with being the first complete vampire novel in the English language, predating “Dracula” by 50 years. Having read the first number of chapters, all I have to say is, Bram Stoker has some splainin’ to do! All the conventions are in place, the author (speculated to be James Malcolm Rymer) apparently having done much of the legwork in exhuming the disparate elements from European folklore and assimilating them into what would become the groundwork for the genre. Furthermore, based on what I’ve read so far, it appears he even established the prototype for at least the Lucy segment of Stoker’s (admittedly superior) novel.

If you missed my previous “Varney” post, on October 2, here’s the link.

Looking forward to plenty of dark and stormy nights with this unabridged “Varney the Vampyre!”

October 13, 2024
Varney the Vampyre Penny Dreadful Review

Is this the year I finally tackle “Varney the Vampyre?”

One of the most notorious of the Victorian penny dreadfuls (inexpensive serialized tales of a decidedly lurid nature, designed to capitalize on the rise of literacy among the working class), “Varney” first appeared in 109 weekly installments issued from 1845 to 1847.

While penny dreadfuls were not, by any stretch of the imagination, great literature, they could conjure undeniably powerful images and provoke a kind of morbid curiosity that have left their mark on popular fiction down the centuries.

Take this passage from “Varney:”

“Her bosom heaves, and her limbs tremble, yet she cannot withdraw her eyes from that marble-looking face. He holds her with his glittering eye…

“With a sudden rush that could not be foreseen – with a strange howling cry that was enough to awaken terror in every breast, the figure seized the long tresses of her hair, and twining them round his bony hands he held her to the bed. Then she screamed…. Her beautifully rounded limbs quivered with the agony of her soul. The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic form with a hideous satisfaction – horrible profanation.”

Say what you will about the prose, I’ve been able to quote that last sentence since the first time I encountered it, some 40 years ago. Also, “THE GIRL HAS SWOONED, AND THE VAMPYRE IS AT HIS HIDEOUS REPAST! (“Horrible” and “hideous” are used a lot in “Varney.”) THAT’S the power of the penny dreadful.

And it’s just a taste of Chapter One.

“Varney” was published anonymously (who could blame the author?), and its true provenance remains a matter of debate. Was it James Malcolm Rymer – as seems to be the current consensus – or Thomas Peckett Prest? Either one or both are also believed to have had a hand in the creation of penny dreadful icon Sweeney Todd. Some believe they may have worked in tandem.

It was common for these writers to get paid by the word, so they very quickly became adept at being able to spin out sensational stories to monumental length. Publishers were elated by proliferating sales spurred by hooked and ever-expanding audiences. It’s the same system that gave rise to more respectable authors such as Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope; but penny dreadfuls dealt unapologetically with extravagant melodrama, flamboyant highwaymen, grisly murder, occult transgressions, exotic Gypsies, blasphemous monk-and-nunsploitation, and cheap knock-offs of more reputable (and more expensive) bestsellers.

Whoever was the animating force behind “Varney” wound up pounding out the first complete vampire novel in the English language. (Among those who made earlier attempts was Lord Byron – a fragment later elaborated upon by his physician, John Polidori – the product of the same summer of 1816 contest that produced Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”)

For as hideous as “Varney” is on every level, the folkloric traits that the author (or authors) synthesized and dramatic situations he (or they) concocted have left their stamp on vampire fiction and movies. Without “Varney,” we would not have had Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” much less Barnabas Collins.

Along the way, Varney begins to develop a conscience and the story flirts with his psychological struggle. For the first time, the vampire is portrayed as a tragic figure. In the end, after a two-year spree, fatigue gets the best of him – AND the writer(s) and probably the public and by extension the publisher – and the vampire decides to destroy himself. [SPOILER ALERT: He hurls himself into Mount Vesuvius!]

The story was first published in book form in 1847. In 1972, it was reprinted in an affordable pair of Dover paperbacks. These soon became as difficult to locate as the vampire’s resting place. In the days before the internet, “Varney” attained a kind of legendary status, because it was simply unattainable. I had only excerpts that were included in anthologies of vampire fiction and English popular literature to whet my appetite.

Now, of course, secondhand copies can be found online. And the work has been reprinted, so you don’t have to break the blood bank to purchase those elusive Dover editions. Dover itself has reprinted them. I just ordered a pair of library discards, which include the original illustrations. I imagine not only is the collected “Varney” more manageable when broken up into two volumes, but the illustrations will be welcome oases for the eyes.

For now, my copy is a super-affordable Wordsworth Editions paperback, published in the U.K., which I located at the Strand bookstore in New York City, probably over a decade ago, for dirt-cheap. The paperback runs to 1166 closely-printed pages. It might prove to be a little rich even for my blood! Also, my eyes aren’t what they used to be. So I am looking forward to the arrival of the Dover edition. There are no illustrations in the Wordsworth volume.

At the time I purchased “Varney,” I also picked up the Wordsworth reprint of another collected penny dreadful, George W. M. Reynolds’ “Wagner the Werewolf,” which I read – and posted about – back in 2014. You can read my thoughts about it here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=280906105410020&set=a.279006378933326

I’d be very interested to know what books you’ll be sinking your fangs into this month. Happy Halloween!

October 2, 2024
Wagner the Werewolf: A Penny Dreadful Delight

What child doesn’t enjoy a good werewolf story? As a kid, I would be allowed to stay up past my bedtime if, for instance, “The Werewolf of London” were being shown on TV. I still own a book on werewolves my parents bought me on one our trips to FAO Schwarz in the mid-‘70s.

While I can’t claim to be werewolf-crazy in a post-“Twilight” world, I do still enjoy a classic monster tale well-told (hence, Classic Ross Amico).

“Wagner the Werewolf” (no relation to the composer) was one of at least three enormously popular penny dreadfuls to appear in the mid-1840s. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, penny dreadfuls were serialized, quite lurid tales designed to appeal to the increasingly literate working class. They were calculated page-turners, presenting a rogues gallery of highwaymen, murderers and supernatural creatures. One of these, “The String of Pearls,” begun in 1846, introduced the character of Sweeney Todd.

“Wagner” is an outrageous piece of bait-and-switch, an alleged werewolf tale which begins with an appearance by Johannes Faust, no less, who turns up in the storm-swept Black Forest of Germany to offer an aged shepherd an offer he can’t refuse. Naturally, it comes with a few fanged, furry strings attached.

Thereafter, any reader who bought the book based on the title hungrily pushes forward expecting an appearance of the horrid beast. He will have to wait a good long while, until page 62, in fact. Then again, until page 198. Then page 303. After a while, one begins to wonder, where wolf? It almost becomes a kind of in-joke, between the reader and himself.

When the wolf does show up, he generally dashes somebody’s brains out (usually by accident), though come to think of it, he does scoop up an unsuspecting child in front of his horrified parents. Oh yeah, and he tramples some swans. Other than that, he just runs really, really fast.

I know, no spoiler alert. But face it, if you read this book for the werewolf, you’re not going to be satisfied. Fortunately, the author, George W.M. Reynolds, couches his werewolf subplot in a labyrinthine tale of Renaissance intrigue, complete with swaggering banditti, sadistic nuns, Ottoman ambition, demonic visitations, and a real corker of a villainess, who in a way is also the novel’s heroine.

Lady Nisida, who plays deaf and dumb for much of the book, is quite a creation, ruthless, cunning and hopelessly in love with Wagner – a well-rounded figure (in more ways than one, as Reynolds is careful to describe nearly every time she appears).

She is easily the most compelling character in the book. You’ll find yourself pulling for her and the newly rejuvenated, fabulously wealthy Wagner – when she isn’t stabbing someone to death in the basement, that is. At least her heart is in the right place, and most of her evil deeds can be attributed to familial loyalty.

It’s interesting, too, to note Reynolds’ sympathetic treatment of the Jew Isaachar, who’s shown to be afraid much of the time (for good reason), but is given a nobility of character that is rare in Victorian fiction. Sure he’s subjected to terrible cruelty, but he’s a far cry from the usual hook-nosed moneylender. The Church, on the other hand, comes in for some pretty sound drubbings.

I confess I began the book with reservations. The first chapter is full of the kind of sentence fragments and abuse of punctuation that makes that other monstrous penny dreadful, “Varney the Vampire,” so painful to read. However, once he takes flight, Reynolds is a pretty fine storyteller. For all its obvious crudity and making-it-up-as-I-go shortcomings, “Wagner the Werewolf” is a ripping good yarn. I found myself thinking in places it was like Alexandre Dumas light.

Finally, it’s always sobering to look back on the “trash” of another era and find it to be probably too high-flown for the average reader of today. That’s a curse less likely to be broken than lyncanthropy.

April 5, 2014

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