Varney the Vampyre, or, the Feast of Blood: A Romance (1845-7) is one of the longest-running and most successful "penny bloods," or Victorian periodical serial fictions. Written primarily by James Malcolm Rymer, the creator of penny fiction villain Sweeney Todd, Varney is the missing link between John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). It established many lasting conventions of vampire literature and is an important precursor to the vampires of Silent Era American cinema.
This is a collection of objects created by the students in ENGL 353/GSWS 353, The Female Gothic. The materials here are related to the history, cultural positionality and interprative possibilities of texts written by women in the gothic tradition or one of its off shoots.