9/24/2023 0 Comments Penny dreadful bookThe edition I have also crosses over with my research as it also features Louisa May Alcott’s short story, ‘Lost in a Pyramid or The Mummy’s Curse’ featuring a cursed flower and the consequences of taking what doesn’t belong to you. I have the 2014 Barnes and Noble edition of the Penny Dreadfuls which contains Sweeny Todd, Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and also contains stories by Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, and Edgar Allan Poe. Nowadays, any literature from the 19 th century that features stories of the macabre has been ‘umbrellaed’ with the term ‘penny dreadful’ whether it was featured in the penny pamphlets or not, but in any case, a lot of them were! The more scandalous, the darker, the more mysterious and horrifying, the better! The over-the-top violence and vivid imagery of the penny dreadfuls meant that they kept coming back for more, and the illustrations only added to their ghoulish nature. Additionally, the very popular Penny Dreadful TV series (2014-2016) starring Eva Green, Timothy Dalton and Billie Piper is also keeping our appetite for the dreadfuls alive. Films popularising dreadfuls such as Tim Burton’s Sweeny Todd (2007), which in itself was an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical of the same name, keeps their legacy thriving. By the time the First World War came about, the penny dreadfuls were essentially non-existent and cheaper periodicals were the ‘in thing’.īut what about them today? Well, with contemporary Gothic and horror fiction becoming increasingly popular, and with our infatuation with the past, we still like to read about all things spooky. These periodicals, including The Union Jack, kind of destroyed the penny dreadful publications. That’s right, even though the penny dreadfuls cost a penny, believe it or not, ‘half-penny’ periodicals started to challenge the penny dreadfuls near the end of the 19 th century costing, you guessed it, half a penny. So, why did they disappear if they were so popular? Well, one reason is money. Gothic classics such as The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole, 1764) were also republished as penny dreadfuls, so we also get another boom of iconic Gothic literature being made easily accessible and affordable. This accessible resource of literature really did become a phenomenon. Additionally, the penny dreadful series was incredibly cheap, being costing a penny, which meant that they were also affordable, even to the working class. With the Victorian-era embarking on social change, it meant that more people were learning to read. The first penny dreadful was published in 1836.
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