BTW: This particular addition of Varney also includes the following:

"Four additional early Penny Dreadfuls detailing insanity, family cannibalism, torture gone wrong, and other bed time stories."

The one on family cannibalism was based upon an actual event.

Besides "Varney," Rymer is also credited with writing "Sweeney Todd," which was also based on an actual event.

I've often wondered whether Rymer knew something about what was going on for reals at the time, and simply wrote about it.

It was published in England as a "penny dreadful." Penny dreadfuls came out serially each week for a penny, and contained a few chapters of a story. They were read by the newly-literate working class who couldn't afford books. They tended to be quite exciting and dramatic, in order to keep the readers coming back for more.

The author is James Malcolm Rymer, one of the most prolific of the penny dreadful authors. It was said that at times he was working on several tales at the same time. How he kept all of his storylines straight is beyond me, as some of these stories were published on a weekly basis for up to two years or so.

Rymer is a very interesting character. It's been generally said that the writers were poor, as they got paid a penny per line of text. Most died in abject poverty, but somehow Rymer became a "Gentleman," as listed in the UK census, and died quite wealthy. He eventually joined the Freemasons, which hints that he was more than just a lowly writer of pulp fiction.

Rymer's first wife died and he remarried. His second wife's father was a political rabble-rouser who got himself arrested for protesting the stamp tax on periodicals and went to jail for a short time because he refused to pay the fine.

He also bought a hotel and ran it for awhile, where he had some, if memory serves, foreign royalty come to stay.