Varney the Vampyre (or The Feast of Blood) was originally written in the mid 1840s in 109 weekly installments known as "penny dreadfuls." It would later by collected into a single 800+ page volume. The book was also published anonymously, and it wasn't until the 1970s that authorship (by James Malcom Rymer) was established.
story follows Sir. Francis Varney. It begins with his attack of a young woman named Flora Bannerworth in her bedroom. His sinks his fangs into her necks and drinks her blood. He's interrupted by members of Flora's family, shot, but is still able to escape.
Throughout the novel (or in each installment, as the story was originally written), more of Varney's history is revealed. He was originally from England under Cromwell during 1649, and during a heated exchange with his son accidentally killed him. After that, he recalls seeing a flash of light and being struck to the ground. He woke up next to a recently opened grave (his own?), and a disembodied voice told him that as a punishment for him killing his son he would have to walk the earth as a vampire.
Like Lord Ruthven, Varney had superhuman strength, could walk around freely in the sunlight (Yes, Dracula could do that too), and needed blood to survive. He could be wounded but would heal with exposure to moonlight.
In his story, Varney is first depicted as being completely evil but later reveals a sense of honor and even feelings of remorse for his actions. This is enough for the Bannerworth family to go from hunting Varney to actually protecting him from a mob that's out to destroy him.
After saying goodbye to the Bannerworths, Varney goes on to have brief encounters with other people. Each time he establishes himself in a new social setting, later tries to bite someone, is discovered, hunted, and then forced to flee -- proving that he apparently wasn't very good at being a vampire (unlike Ruthven and later, Dracula).
Barney the Vampyre was derided by modern critics as being poorly written, but it must be remembered that his story was originally a penny dreadful, a form of simple pulp fiction. Also, despite authorship eventually going to Rymer, there was still a strong chance that there was more than one author over the course of the 109 initial installments.
Still, in the end, Varney deserves credit for being one of the first literary vampires to precede Dracula.
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