A penny dreadful (also called penny horrible, penny awful, penny number and penny blood) was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing one (old) penny. The term, however, soon 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 pulp paper and were aimed primarily at working class adolescents.
Famous quotes containing the words penny and/or dreadful:
“There is no passion more dominant and instinctive in the human spirit than the need of the country to which one belongs.... The time comes when nothing in the world is so important as a breath of one’s own particular climate. If it were one’s last penny it would be used for that return passage.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Though living is a dreadful thing
And a dreadful thing is it
Life the niggard will not thank,
She will not teach who will not sing,
And what serves, on the final bank,
Our logic and our wit?”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)