Penny dreadful

Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful,[1] and penny blood.[2] The term typically referred to a story published in weekly parts, each costing one penny. The subject matter of these stories was typically sensational, focusing on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. First published in the 1830s, penny dreadfuls featured characters such as Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin and Varney the Vampire. The Guardian described penny dreadfuls as "Britain’s first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young."[3]

For other uses, see Penny dreadful (disambiguation).

Black Bess; or, The Knight of the Road. A romanticized tale of Dick Turpin – a popular subject in fiction. Circa 1860
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While the term "penny dreadful" was originally used in reference to a specific type of literature circulating in mid-Victorian Britain, it came to encompass a variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fiction, such as story papers and booklet "libraries". The penny dreadfuls were printed on cheap wood pulp paper and were aimed at young working class men.[4] More than a million boys’ periodicals were sold a week, but the popularity of penny dreadfuls was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature, especially the half-penny periodicals published by Alfred Harmsworth.[3][5]

Origins

Crime broadsides were commonly sold at public executions in the United Kingdom in the 18th and 19th centuries. These were often produced by printers who specialised in them. They were typically illustrated by a crude picture of the crime, a portrait of the criminal, or a generic woodcut of a hanging taking place. There would be a written account of the crime and of the trial and often the criminal's confession of guilt. A doggerel verse warning others to not follow the executed person's example, to avoid their fate, was another common feature.[6]

Victorian-era Britain experienced social changes that resulted in increased literacy rates. With the rise of capitalism and industrialisation, people began to spend more money on entertainment, contributing to the popularisation of the novel. Improvements in printing resulted in newspapers such as Joseph Addison's The Spectator and Richard Steele's The Tatler, and England's more fully recognizing the singular concept of reading as a form of leisure; it was, of itself, a new industry. Other significant changes included industrialisation and an increased capacity for travel via the invention of tracks, engines, and the corresponding railway distribution (the first public railway, Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened in 1825). These changes created both a market for cheap popular literature and the ability for it to be circulated on a large scale. The first penny serials were published in the 1830s to meet this demand.[7] Between 1830 and 1850 there were up to 100 publishers of penny-fiction, in addition to many magazines which embraced the genre.[8] The serials were priced to be affordable to working-class readers, and were considerably cheaper than the serialised novels of authors such as Charles Dickens, which cost a shilling [twelve pennies] per part.[9]

Subject matter
Cover of a Varney the Vampire publication (1845)

The stories themselves were reprints, or sometimes rewrites, of the earliest Gothic thrillers such as The Castle of Otranto or The Monk, as well as new stories about famous criminals. The first ever Penny Blood, published in 1836, was called Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, &c. The story continued over 60 issues, each eight pages of tightly-packed text with one half-page illustration.[10] Some of the most famous of these penny part-stories were The String of Pearls: A Romance (introducing Sweeney Todd, "the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"),[11] The Mysteries of London (inspired by the French serial The Mysteries of Paris), and Varney the Vampire (1845–47). Varney is the tale of the vampire Sir Francis Varney, and introduced many of the tropes present in vampire fiction recognizable to modern audiences — it was the first story to refer to sharpened teeth for a vampire.[12]

Highwaymen were popular heroes; Black Bess or the Knight of the Road, outlining the largely imaginary exploits of real-life English highwayman Dick Turpin, continued for 254 episodes and was well over 2,000 pages long. Turpin was not executed until page 2,207. Some lurid stories purported to be based on fact: Spring-Heeled Jack was what we would now call an urban myth. The first ‘sighting’ of him was in 1837, and he was described as having a terrifying and frightful appearance, with diabolical physiognomy, clawed hands and eyes that ‘resembled red balls of fire’. He was mainly sighted in London, but popped up elsewhere, and seems to have been a source of frightened fascination for several decades. At the height of Spring-Heeled Jack hysteria, several women reported being attacked by a clawed monster of a man breathing blue flames. The last ‘sighting’ was in Liverpool in 1904. Other serials were thinly-disguised plagiarisms of popular contemporary literature. The publisher Edward Lloyd, for instance, published a number of hugely successful penny serials derived from the works of Charles Dickens, such as Oliver Twiss and Nickelas Nicklebery.[7][13]

Sweeney Todd murdering a victim in The String of Pearls (1846–47)

The illustration which featured at the start of each issue was an integral part of the dreadfuls’ appeal, often acting as a teaser for future instalments. As one reader said, “You see’s an engraving of a man hung up, burning over a fire, and some [would] go mad if they couldn’t learn… all about him.” No wonder one publisher’s rallying cry to his illustrators was “more blood – much more blood!”[10]

Working class boys who could not afford a penny a week often formed clubs that would share the cost, passing the flimsy booklets from reader to reader. Other enterprising youngsters would collect a number of consecutive parts, then rent the volume out to friends. In 1866, Boys of England was introduced as a new type of publication, an eight-page magazine that featured serial stories as well as articles and shorts of interest.[14][15] Numerous competitors quickly followed, with such titles as Boys' Leisure Hour, Boys' Standard, Young Men of Great Britain, etc. As the price and quality of other types of fiction works were the same, these also fell under the general definition of penny dreadfuls.

Appearing in the 1860s, American dime novels were edited and rewritten for a British audience. These appeared in booklet form, such as the Boy's First Rate Pocket Library. Frank Reade, Buffalo Bill, and Deadwood Dick were all popular with the penny dreadful audience.

The penny dreadfuls were influential since they were, in the words of one commentator, "the most alluring and low-priced form of escapist reading available to ordinary youth, until the advent in the early 1890s of future newspaper magnate Alfred Harmsworth's price-cutting 'halfpenny dreadfuller'".[16] In reality, the serial novels were overdramatic and sensational, but generally harmless. If anything, the penny dreadfuls, although obviously not the most enlightening or inspiring of literary selections, resulted in increasingly literate youth in the Industrial period. The wide circulation of this sensationalist literature, however, contributed to an ever-greater fear of crime in mid-Victorian Britain.[17]

Decline
British publishing magnate Alfred Harmsworth developed popular journalism intended for the working class

The popularity of penny dreadfuls was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature. Leading the challenge were popular periodicals published by Alfred Harmsworth. Priced at one half-penny, Harmsworth's story papers were cheaper and, at least initially, were more respectable than the competition. Harmsworth claimed to be motivated by a wish to challenge the pernicious influence of penny dreadfuls. According to an editorial in the first number of The Half-penny Marvel in 1893:

It is almost a daily occurrence with magistrates to have before them boys who, having read a number of 'dreadfuls', followed the examples set forth in such publications, robbed their employers, bought revolvers with the proceeds, and finished by running away from home, and installing themselves in the back streets as 'highwaymen'. This and many other evils the 'penny dreadful' is responsible for. It makes thieves of the coming generation, and so helps fill our gaols.[5]

The Half-penny Marvel was soon followed by a number of other Harmsworth half-penny periodicals, such as The Union Jack and Pluck. At first the stories were high-minded moral tales, reportedly based on true experiences, but it was not long before these papers started using the same kind of material as the publications they competed against. A. A. Milne, the author of Winnie the Pooh, once said, "Harmsworth killed the penny dreadful by the simple process of producing the 'ha'penny dreadfuller'".[18] The quality of the Harmsworth/Amalgamated Press papers began to improve throughout the early 20th century, however. By the time of the First World War, papers such as Union Jack dominated the market in the UK.[19]

The penny dreadfuls were also challenged by book series such as The Penny Library of Famous Books launched in 1896 by George Newnes which he characterized as "penny delightfuls" intended to counter the pernicious effects of the penny dreadfuls,[20] and such as the Penny Popular Novels[21] launched in 1896 by W. T. Stead.

Legacy
Advertisement for an 1886 penny dreadful of Spring Heeled Jack, “the terror of London”

A growing consumer culture, increased literacy rates, industrialisation, and the invention of railway (which allowed for mass distribution), created a new market for cheap popular literature for the masses, and the ability for it to be circulated on a large scale. Penny dreadfuls were created in the 1830s to meet this demand.[22] The Guardian described penny dreadfuls as "Britain’s first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young", and "the Victorian equivalent of video games".[3] More than one million boys’ periodicals were sold per week.[3]

Two popular characters to come out of the penny dreadfuls were Jack Harkaway, introduced in the Boys of England in 1871, and Sexton Blake, who began in the Half-penny Marvel in 1893.[23] In 1904, the Union Jack became "Sexton Blake's own paper", and he appeared in every issue thereafter, up until the paper's demise in 1933. In total, Blake appeared in roughly 4,000 adventures, right up into the 1970s. Harkaway was also popular in America and had many imitators.

The fictional Sweeney Todd, the subject of both a successful musical by Stephen Sondheim and a feature film by Tim Burton, also first appeared in an 1846/1847 penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls: A Romance by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest.[24]

The penny dreadfuls inspired the British comics that began to emerge in the 1870s.[25] Describing penny dreadfuls as "a 19th-century British publishing phenomenon", the BBC adds, their "very disposability (the booklets’ bargain cover price meant they were printed on exceptionally flimsy paper) has made surviving examples a rarity, despite their immense popularity at the time."[26][27]

Some items that have been named after this topic include a song called "Penny Dreadfuls" by Animal Collective, the Irish literary magazine The Penny Dreadful, and Penny Dreadful, a Showtime horror television series set in Victorian England.[28]

See also

References
  1. Zimmer, Ben. "Horribles and terribles". Language Log. Retrieved 4 June 2011.
  2. Many people use the term "penny blood" interchangeably with "penny dreadful". Sally Powell distinguishes between these terms, however, and designates "penny bloods" as cheap sensational literature written largely for working-class adults. Powell, p. 46
  3. "Penny dreadfuls: the Victorian equivalent of video games". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
  4. James, Louis (1974). Fiction for the Working Man, 1830–50. Harmondsworth: Penguin University Books. p. 20. ISBN 0-14-060037-X.
  5. Springhall, John (1998). Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-312-21394-7. OCLC 38206817.
  6. "Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides Collected by Harvard Law School Library". Harvard University Law School Library. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
  7. Turner, E. S. (1975). Boys Will be Boys. Harmondsworth: Penguin. p. 20. ISBN 0-14-004116-8.
  8. Flanders, Judith (15 May 2014). “Penny dreadfuls”. British Library. Retrieved 6 February 2019
  9. "Was Dickens Really Paid By The Word?". The University of Santa Cruz. Retrieved 27 September 2017
  10. Flanders, Judith. “Penny dreadfuls”. British Library. Retrieved 11 March 2020
  11. "Penny Dreadful: From True Crime to Fiction > Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in Concert". KQED-TV. Archived from the original on 21 February 2003. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  12. "Did Vampires Not Have Fangs in Movies Until the 1950s?". Huffington Post. Retrieved 27 September 2017
  13. Flood, Alison (25 June 2019). "Oliver Twiss and Martin Guzzlewit – the fan fiction that ripped off Dickens". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
  14. Christopher Banham, "England and America Against the World": Empire and the USE in Edwin J. Brett's Boys of England, 1866-99, Victorian Periodicals Review, 40:2, 2007, pp.151-71
  15. "Boys of England". Stanford University Libraries. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
  16. Springhall, John (1994). "Disseminating Impure Literature': The 'Penny Dreadful' Publishing Business Since 1860". Economic Historical Review. 47 (3).
  17. Casey, Christopher (Winter 2011). "Common Misperceptions: The Press and Victorian Views of Crime". Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 41 (3).
  18. Knuth, Rebecca (2012). Children's Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People and a Nation. Scarecrow Press. p. 65.
  19. Editorials in early issues of papers such as the Union Jack or Boys' Friend make frequent references to "the blood and thunders", but as time went on the mentions disappeared. Letters sent in by parents or teachers were frequently printed, praising the papers for putting the "trash" out of business.
  20. Penny Library of Famous Books, oac.cdlib.org. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
  21. Penny Popular Novels (The Masterpiece Library) ("Review of Reviews" Office) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
  22. Turner, E. S. (1975). Boys Will be Boys. Harmondsworth: Penguin. p. 20. ISBN 0-14-004116-8.
  23. Turner, E.S. (1976). Boys Will Be Boys. Penguin. p. 129.
  24. Prest, James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett. "The String of Pearls" – via Wikisource.
  25. "A Century Of Comic Capers For Kids At Dewsbury Museum". Culture 24. Retrieved 10 September 2020.
  26. "The shocking tale of the penny dreadful". BBC. Retrieved 10 September 2020.
  27. Jason Baumann, Susan and Douglas Dillon (May 22, 2014). “The True Delights of Penny Dreadfuls”. The New York Public Library.
  28. "From Zine to Magazine. About, The Penny Dreadful, New Irish Writers". Thepennydreadful.org. Retrieved 23 October 2013.

Sources

  • Anglo, Michael (1977). Penny Dreadfuls and Other Victorian Horrors. London: Jupiter. ISBN 0-904041-59-X.
  • Carpenter, Kevin (1983). Penny Dreadfuls and comics : English periodicals for children from Victorian times to the present day. London: Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood. ISBN 0-905209-47-8.
  • Casey, Christopher (2010). "Common Misperceptions: The Press and Victorian Views of Crime". Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Cambridge: MIT Press. 41 (3 - Winter 2011): 367–391. doi:10.1162/JINH_a_00106. PMID 21141651.
  • Chesterton, G. K. (1901). A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls. London: The Daily News.
  • Haining, Peter (1975). The Penny dreadful: or, Strange, horrid and sensational tales!. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-01779-1.
  • James, Louis (1963). Fiction for the working man 1830–50. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-060037-7.
  • Powell, Sally (2004). "Black Markets and Cadaverous Pies: The Corpse, Urban Trade and Industrial Consumption in the Penny Blood". In Maunder, Andrew; Moore, Grace (eds.). Victorian Crime Madness and Sensation. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. ISBN 0-7546-4060-4.
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