Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic: Investigations of Pernicious Tales of Terror

Uncovers neglected Gothic texts of the nineteenth century crucial to understanding working-class popular culture.

This collection of essays recovers a plethora of penny dreadful titles which have, until now, been largely neglected by literary studies and reveals the cultural, social, and literary significance of these working-class texts. It demonstrates the penny dreadful's importance to our understanding of both working-class Victorian literature and the Gothic mode, providing new insights into the fields of Victorian literature, popular culture, and Gothic fiction more broadly. Through its analysis of penny dreadfuls, the collection offers an in-depth and intertextual exposition of Victorian society, literature, and gothic representations.