Varney the Vampyre, or, the Feast of Blood: A Romance (1845-7) is one of the longest-running and most successful Victorian penny fiction serials, popularly termed "penny bloods." Written primarily by James Malcolm Rymer, the creator of penny fiction villain Sweeney Todd, as one of the top writers at Edward Lloyd's Salisbury Square penny fiction factory, Varney is an innovative, wide-ranging contribution to nineteenth-century British vampire lore. A missing link between John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), Varney established many lasting conventions of vampire literature and is an important precursor to the vampires of Silent Era American cinema. This documentary critical edition presents the original text of Varney the Vampyre, complete with its major illustrations, as well as a facsimile and transcription of a recently-discovered 1846 London stage adaptation of Varney.