Varney the Vampyre by James Malcolm Rymer
Book review
by John Goodrich

 

Rating:

 

Burned out by the same old vampire stories? Read them all, been there done that? Ready for a real project? Do five hundred thousand words of small print spread out on 868 pages divided into in 220 chapters sound appealing? Then Varney the Vampyre is your book. Or books, actually, since the Dover edition is split into two volumes.

Varney the Vampyre has been described as "the most famous book no one has ever read." Small wonder � because while it holds an important place at the root of all vampire stories in English, few people have actually been able to endure reading it. Despite this lack of modern readership, the folklore Varney propagated created a strong influence among all of his literary descendants � Dracula, Carmilla, and Lord Ruthven especially. If you are interested in the roots of vampire literature in English, then you should read Varney the Vampire.

However, be warned that reading this book is more like an assignment than something to pull out at the beach. The text stretches itself out immensely � for example, it takes more than thirty cramped pages for a duel between Varney and the quasi-heroic Charles Holland to go from proposition through numerous objections to actual fact, during which very little else except wrangling and hand-wringing occurs. At least Shakespeare has solid matter to read; much of Varney the Vampire is vacuous filler.