Varney The Vampire was one of the earliest of fictional vampires, predating Dracula and coming just after Polidori’s short entry to the genre. He was also unremittingly bad – none of that tragic hero rubbish for him! Thoroughly nasty.

He appeared in weekly penny dreadfuls, densely packed fictions in small chapbook size that spread lurid tales amongst the newly lietrate Victorian masses. Working and lower middle class, and thoroughly unrespectable, they featured folk heroes and villains such as Sweeney Todd and Charile Peace, Dick Turpin, and even the likes of Springheel Jack (of whom more in a moment). The work of numerous toiling hacks, these dreadfuls ran for years, with meandering plots and fervid invention to keep the tale going. Oh, and Charles Dickens used the regular chapbook to publish first runs of his novels, and build a huge audience.

Springheel Jack, unlike Varney, had basis in fact. A monstrous, fire-breathing man who could leap tall buildings, he terrorised the East End in a series of scares during the late 1800’s. Was he a demon, a man… or what? Eventually, a nobleman owned up to perpetrating a hoax and causing panic, without giving a real reason. But still the sightings carried on intermittently, as Jack became as much urban legend and myth as that other Jack who stalked the 1880’s…

As for me, I’m a writer who loves the old stuff, and is responsible for several novels in series fiction for US and UK publishers, as well some non-fiction on true crime, the paranormal, and horror movies. In the course of the dayjob, novel outlines have to be submitted which are tightly plotted for continuity, and so there’s little scope to invent on the hoof.

Hence Varney versus Springheel Jack, which allows me to go back to the pulp that fires that imagination, and gives me the scope to invent on the hoof. Stimulates the imagination, as who knows where it’ll go next? Not me, that’s for sure!

Want to find out?