History
Penny
Parts
The penny part
stories got underway in the 1830s,
originally as a cheaper alternative for the working class
adults, but by the 1850s the serial stories were aimed
exclusively at teens. The stories themselves were reprints
or sometimes rewrites of Gothic thrillers such as The Monk or The Castle of
Otranto, as well
as new stories about famous criminals. Some of the most
famous of these penny part stories were The String of Pearls
(which ostensibly
introduced Sweeney
Todd),
The Mysteries of
London (inspired
by the French serial, The Mysteries of
Paris) and
Varney the
Vampire.
Highwaymen were popular heroes. Black Bess or the Knight of the
Road, outlining
the largely imaginary exploits of real-life
highwayman Dick
Turpin, continued for
254 episodes.
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.
Penny
Dreadfuls
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 interests. It was
printed on the same cheap paper, though sporting a larger
format than the penny parts.
Numerous competitors quickly followed, with such titles
as Boy’s Leisure
Hour, Boys Standard, Young Men of Great
Britain, etc. As
the price and quality of fiction was the same, these
storypapers also fell under the general definition of Penny
Dreadfuls (also known as Penny Bloods or Blood and Thunders
in their early days).
American dime
novels were edited and
rewritten for an English 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.
Half-penny
Dreadful
In the
mid-1890s
a publisher,
Alfred
Harmsworth, decided to
do something about what was widely perceived as the
corrupting influence of the Penny Dreadfuls. He issued new
storypapers, The
Half-penny Marvel, The Union Jack and Pluck, all priced at a half-penny. At first the
stories were high-minded, moral tales, reportedly based on
true experiences, but it wasn’t long before these papers
started using the same kind of material as the publications
they competed against. A.A. Milne once said, “Harmsworth killed the penny
dreadful by the simple process of producing the ha’penny
dreadfuller.”
Legacy
Two phenomenally
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.
Blake soon took over the lead spot in Union Jack and appeared in roughly 4,000 adventures,
right up into the 1970s, a record only exceed by
Nick Carter
and Dixon Hawke. Harkaway was also popular in America,
and had many imitators.
Over time, the Penny Dreadfuls morphed into the British
comic magazines.
Owing to their cheap production, their perceived lack of
value, and such hazards as war-time paper drives, the Penny
Dreadfuls, particularly the earliest ones, are fairly rare
today.
Further reading
• Anglo,
Michael Penny
Dreadfuls and Other Victorian
Horrors
• Haining, Peter Penny
Dreadfuls
•
Penny Dreadfuls and Comics, catalog of exhibition, Bethnal Green
Museum of Childhood
Penny Dreadful's
Shilling Shockers is a
horror host show based out of New England that airs on
cable access in several US states. The witch hostess, Penny
Dreadful, is based on the name of the cheap paperbacks, as
is her show, Shilling Shockers (a synonym).