A Penny For Your Thoughts
What better way to start our first blog post than with penny fiction?
Launched in 1836 as a form of entertainment for the working class. The penny dreadful was known by a few names such as penny horrible, penny awful and penny blood it was the official title until it was changed in the 1860s. The penny dreadful came in weekly instalments and consisted of 8 to 16 pages at the price of one penny which meant they were affordable for everyone to enjoy including the working class. The penny dreadful was printed on wood pulp paper, making it cheap and easy enough to mass produce. They contained stories of crime, degeneracy and the wild exploits of rouge detectives they also even dipped a toe into the supernatural.
The very first penny book was titled The Lives of the most notorious highwaymen and was released for all to read in 1836. The black and white illustration on the front cover was not always of the best quality but made for a great marketing tool luring in the masses with the intrigue of what stories would unfold inside. Between 1836 and 1850 there were around one hundred publishing houses distributing penny fiction across London the most successful of them being Sweeney Todd the character portrayed as a demonic barber luring people to their demise. The first instance of Todd was in The String of Pearls booklet, which was published in 1846 and had seen so much popularity that it was adapted for the stage before the story had even concluded and would go on to achieve worldwide fame.
At the height of popularity, the penny dreadful saw more than a million copies being sold per week until its inevitable decline once Alfred Harmsworth created the half-penny marvel it was cheaper by half as the name suggests and was also said to tell the tales of true events. Of course, once the penny marvel had gripped and taken over the once avid dreadful readers it too changed into an even more radicalized version of the penny dreadful the very literature type Harmsworth was competing against.
Following the success of the half penny marvel and the penny dreadful before it came the book series the penny library it was marketed purposely as penny delightful in the hopes it would steer the young male audience of Victorian London back on the right side of the law that the penny dreadful had once been blamed for encouraging.
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