<P> Varney the Vampire ; or , the Feast of Blood is a Victorian era serialized gothic horror story variously attributed to James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest . It first appeared in 1845 -- 1847 as a series of weekly cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as `` penny dreadfuls '' . The author was paid by the typeset line so when the story was published in book form in 1847 , it was of epic length : the original edition ran to 876 double - columned pages and 232 chapters . Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words . </P>
varney the vampyre is an example of this type of 19th century weekly publication
penny dreadfuls