Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Varney the Vampyre

October Reads: Ghosts, Ghouls & Literary Classics

I’m still determined to finish rereading Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” before seeing Mason Bates’ operatic adaptation at the Met next week – which won’t be hard to do honestly, though it’s seriously going to cut into my Halloween reading. (I’ve still got 250 pages to go.) But Halloween can run into November, as far as I’m concerned. And winter is made for ghost stories. With that in mind, this is what I’m planning to have on my bedside table for the month of October.

Somehow, I missed the fact that in 2014, Penguin put out a series of paperback reissues of once-popular novels that became classic movies. I’m not really slavering over Edna Ferber or Fannie Hurst, but I was poking around a used bookstore last week and stumbled across a copy of R.A. Dick’s “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.” I’ve never read it, but having seen the film many times and watched the TV series when I was a kid, I am familiar with the story: a widow moves into a seaside cottage once owned by a salty sea captain who never really moved out. It’s not going to have a lot in it to really make the skin crawl, so it’s the kind of book I could put off reading until winter or even Valentine’s Day, but I’m moving it up to the top of the list because the Princeton Garden Theatre happens to be showing the movie next Wednesday. Anyway, at 192 pages, it looks like it’s going to be a swift read. Blood and Swash!

(Parenthetically, if you’re interested, here are the other novels in the series: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/VMO/a-vintage-movie-classic/.)

A while ago, I was up in Tarrytown, NY, where I visited Washington Irving’s house (on my way to see Percy Grainger Home & Studio in White Plains), and also Sleepy Hollow, which is not so sleepy anymore. But it does have some decent cemeteries, and I paid my respects at Washington Irving’s grave. There’s also a bridge there on what is alleged to have been the site that inspired “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” I’ve read the story a few times over the years (“Rip Van Winkle” too), starting all the way back in seventh grade, but it’s been a while. In recent Octobers, I reacquainted myself with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe (2023) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (2021), so I figured this year I could go back to Irving and cherry-pick some of his supernatural tales, which are often interleaved in his story collections with material that has nothing whatsoever to do with ghosts. I know it’s been a long, long time since I read “The Adventure of the German Student” (though I remember it well) and “The Devil and Tom Walker,” but I find he’s written a great deal else of a supernatural bent beside.

Posting yesterday about Walter Huston reminded me of his scenery-devouring performance as Mr. Scratch in “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” I mentioned in a comment that when I first saw the film, I didn’t love it, despite Huston’s performance and the fact that it looks like an Orson Welles movie. The reason was that the indelible short story by Stephen Vincent Benét (born in Fountain Hill, outside Bethlehem, PA) was still fresh in my head. I have since grown to love the film, but it occurs to me that I have not read the story for many, many years. So I’m adding it to the list.

Another recent, happy discovery while used book-shopping is a work by Philadelphia-born Charles Brockden Brown, who has been called the Father of the American Novel, especially celebrated for his gothic tales. He’s probably best-known for “Wieland,” which is kind of an 18th century precursor to “The Shining,” in some respects, with the added ingredients of religious fanaticism, ventriloquism, and spontaneous combustion. A Brown novel that is new to me is “Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.” I picked it up not really knowing anything about it, but after I got it home I learned it’s set where the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers meet – essentially in my hometown of Easton, PA (only in 1787)! Of course, there’s somnambulism, murder, and Lenni Lenape, so not much has really changed. Not sure if I’ll have time for this one before Halloween – maybe – but it’s definitely on the list for November or after Christmas.

You may recall, last year I finally made the commitment to tackle “Varney the Vampyre,” attributed to James Malcolm Rymer. Rymer is also thought to have written “The String of Pearls,” which introduced the character of Sweeney Todd. One of the most notorious of the Victorian penny dreadfuls, “Varney” detailed the villain’s blasphemous rampages for 109 weekly installments from 1845 to 1847. Combined, they add up to 1166 pages in a Wordsworth Edition paperback I was delighted to acquire after decades of searching for a complete collection. In the early ‘70s, “Varney” had also been compiled by Dover, in two volumes, and last year I was able to get a hold of a reprint of that edition, as well. The reproduction of the text is not always of the finest quality, with parts of the individual letters murky or even missing, but it does have the original illustrations. As you can imagine, reading a 1100-page vampire serial in lurid, stodgy prose can be a bit like going back and binge-watching “Dark Shadows.” In time, you risk becoming one of the undead yourself. So at the end of Volume 1, for my own welfare, I decided I needed a rest. I’m hoping to sit down with Volume 2 and finish my descent to the nadir of this anti-Everest of vampire fiction.

I admit, it sounds like a lot, but if I push “Edgar Huntly” to another month, I bet I could do it. It would be a lot easier if not for “Kavalier and Clay,” which I am loving, but am revisiting mostly because I want it fresh in my head for the opera.

By all means, let me know what you’re reading, especially if it’s seasonal and horrible. Happy Halloween!

BONUS! Today is Paul Dukas’ birthday. Maybe a good time to trot out Goethe’s ballad of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” And to watch Mickey stir up a world of trouble here:

https://video.disney.com/watch/sorcerer-s-apprentice-fantasia-4ea9ebc01a74ea59a5867853

PAINTING: “The Devil and Tom Walker” (1843), by Charles Deas

October 1, 2025
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

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