Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic

Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic

Author: Nicole C. Dittmer

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2023-01-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1786839717

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• Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic uncovers neglected Gothic texts of the nineteenth century which are crucial in understanding working-class popular culture. • The approach of this study of penny dreadfuls is vast and eclectic, ranging from data-driven publication data to close textual analysis of these texts to adaptations of penny fiction. • This title covers a broad range of penny texts, some of which have never before been written on.


The Penny Dreadfuls

The Penny Dreadfuls

Author: Bram Stoker

Publisher: Skyhorse

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 912

ISBN-13: 9781634501149

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Blood, gore, murder, and sin—Victorian literature’s darkest horrors await you. The penny dreadfuls were cheap nineteenth-century English stories that featured gothic, lurid, disturbing, and tantalizing content. These horror serials cost a penny per issue, hence their name: penny dreadfuls. The penny dreadfuls often paid homage to—and even inspired—many of the more famous narratives of the horror genre. This book unites three of the most notorious literary giants of the nineteenth century, all born of the penny dreadful tradition: Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, all in one authentic collection of the best Victorian gothic horror ever written. Originally published at a time when dramatic scientific discoveries sparked a cultural fixation on the paranormal, these stories remain timeless in their uncanny ability to prey upon our primal fear of that which is strange, violent, and unknown. This book contains three haunting tales and a bonus story: • Dracula by Bram Stoker • Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker (Dracula’s original first chapter, not published until after Stoker’s death) • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Curl up with The Penny Dreadfuls on a dark, moonless night and rediscover these chilling classics. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.


Penny Dreadfuls

Penny Dreadfuls

Author:

Publisher: Fall River

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781435157217

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666 pages of shocking sensational stories from the Victorian era, twenty in all including such classics as James Malcolm Rymer's The String of Pearls or Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet-Street, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, Guy De Maupassant's The Diary of a Madman or Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The original penny dreadfuls were cheaply printed, inexpensive publications written to titillate the masses with shocking thrills and lurid horrors. Over time, penny dreadful became a catch-phrase for any story steeped in gothic horror that pushed the limits of what was acceptable in popular fiction. In the stories compiled here, werewolves, ghouls, vampires, made doctor, carnivorous highwaymen, ancient Egyptian curses and reanimated corpses are just some of the horrors that the victims contend with.


The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories

The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories

Author: Dennis Denisoff

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2004-05-11

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1551113562

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The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories beautifully demonstrates the astonishing variety and ingenuity of Victorian short stories. This collection brings together works focused on a wide range of popular Victorian subjects in many different styles and forms (including comic, gothic, fantasy, adventure, and colonial works; science fiction; children’s tales; New Woman writing; Irish yarns; stories originally published in popular periodicals; and travel stories). Both well-known and lesser-known authors are included, and both men and women are well represented. This anthology includes twenty-six annotated stories, a general introduction that discusses the history of the genre’s development in relation to key socio-political issues of the Victorian era, and suggestions for secondary readings. It also includes an intriguing selection of Victorian writings on the genre by Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Frederick Wedmore, and Laura Marholm Hansson.


The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends

The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends

Author: Simon Young

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2022-06-27

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1496839455

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Winner of the 2023 Brian McConnell Book Award from the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research In the last fifty years, folklorists have amassed an extraordinary corpus of contemporary legends including the “Choking Doberman,” the “Eaten Ticket,” and the “Vanishing Hitchhiker.” But what about the urban legends of the past? These legends and tales have rarely been collected, and when they occasionally appear, they do so as ancestors or precursors of the urban legends of today, rather than as stories in their own right. In The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends, Simon Young fills this gap for British folklore (and for the wider English-speaking world) of the 1800s. Young introduces seventy Victorian urban legends ranging from “Beetle Eyes” to the “Shoplifter’s Dilemma” and from “Hands in the Muff” to the “Suicide Club.” While a handful of these stories are already known, the vast majority have never been identified, and they have certainly never received scholarly treatment. Young begins the volume with a lengthy introduction assessing nineteenth-century media, emphasizing the importance of the written word to the perpetuation and preservation of these myths. He draws on numerous nineteenth-century books, periodicals, and ephemera, including digitized newspaper archives—particularly the British Newspaper Archive, an exciting new hunting ground for folklorists. The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends will appeal to an academic audience as well as to anyone who is interested in urban legends.


The Invention of Murder

The Invention of Murder

Author: Judith Flanders

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2013-07-23

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 1250024889

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"Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.


Varney the Vampire; Or, the Feast of Blood

Varney the Vampire; Or, the Feast of Blood

Author: Thomas Peckett Prest

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-05-28

Total Pages: 1014

ISBN-13:

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Varney the Vampire Or the Feast of Blood is a horror story by Thomas Peckett Prest. Structured in different episodes, these are classic tales of blood sucking horrors at midnights, for fans of the genre.