Further reading: Penny Dreadfuls & Murder Broadsides
This is the reference & further reading list for the article,
Penny Dreadfuls & Murder Broadsides
On Crime broadsides see the superb Crime, Broadsides and Social Change, 1800–1850, 2020 by Kate Bates, based on an analysis of 650 nineteenth-century crime broadsides. The British Library has a wonderful print culture series of short articles on everything from Victorian reading habits to penny dreadfuls and street literature.
For an overview of the nineteenth-century reading revolution (although with little mention of penny dreadfuls), read the excellent, The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1830–1914, 2010.
Reference & further reading:
Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1998
Hephzibah Anderson, ‘The shocking tale of the penny dreadful’, BBC Culture [accessed Oct. 2, 2020]
Michael Anglo, Penny Dreadfuls and other Victorian Horrors, 1977
Christopher Mark Banham, Boys of England and Edwin J. Brett, 1866–99, (Ph.D. thesis, Leeds University, 2016) [PDF]
Kate Bates, Crime, Broadsides and Social Change, 1800–1850, 2020
Jen Cadwallader & Laurence W Mazzeno (eds.), Teaching Victorian Literature in the Twenty-First Century: A Guide to Pedagogy, 2017
Philippe Chassaigne, ‘Popular representations of crime: the crime broadside — a subculture of violence in Victorian Britain?’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies [online], vol. 3:2, 1999
Hugh Chisholm, ‘How to counteract the Penny Dreadful’, Fortnightly, 58.347, 1895, pp. 765–75
Patrick Dunae, ‘Penny dreadfuls: Late Nineteenth-century Boys’ Literature and Crime’, Victorian Studies, 22, 1979, pp. 133–50
Judith Flanders, ‘Penny Dreadfuls’, British Library [accessed Sept. 25 2020]
Kate Flint, ‘Victorian Readers’, British Library [accessed Sept. 30, 2020]
Marjory Lang, ‘Childhood’s Champions: Mid-Victorian Children’s Periodicals and the Critics’, Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 13:1/2, 1980, pp. 17–31
Graham Law, Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press, 2000
Marie Léger-St-Jean, ‘Price One Penny: A Database of Cheap Literature, 1837–1860’, priceonepenny.info
Devon Lemire, ‘A Historiographical Survey of Literacy in Britain between 1780
and 1830’, Constellations, 4:1, 2013, pp. 248–61
A. Mandal, ‘Gothic Fiction, from Shilling Shockers to Penny Bloods’ in C. Spooner (Author) & D. Townshend & A. Wright (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Gothic (pp. 139–61), 2020
Randall Martin, Women and Murder in Early Modern News Pamphlets and Broadside Ballads, 1573–1697, 2017
David F. Mitch, The Rise of Popular Literacy in Victorian England: The Influence of Private Choice and Public Policy, 1992
Andrew Pettegree, Broadsheets: Single-Sheet Publishing in the First Age of Print, 2017
Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 2010
Joanne Shattock (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1830–1914, 2010
John Springhall, ‘Pernicious Reading? ‘The Penny Dreadful as Scapegoat for Late-Victorian Juvenile Crime’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 27:4, 1994, pp. 326–49
John Springhall, ‘Disseminating impure literature: the “penny dreadful” publishing business since 1860’, Economic History Review, 47, 1994, pp. 567–84
John Springhall, Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830–1996, 1998
Kate Summerscale, ‘Penny dreadfuls: the Victorian equivalent of video games’, The Guardian, 30 April 2016 [accessed 13 Oct. 2020]
Mary F. Thwaite, From Primer to Pleasure in Reading, 1972
Anna Vaninskaya, ‘Learning to Read Trash: Late-Victorian Schools and the Penny Dreadful’, in K. Halsey & W.R. Owens (eds.), The History of Reading: Evidence from the British Isles, c. 1750–1950, vol. 2, 2011, pp. 67-83
Freely accessible online collections of penny dreadfuls and broadsides:
National Library of Scotland: The Word on the Street Collection
Harvard Library: English Crime and Execution Broadsides (wonderfully presented and searchable.)
British Library: Penny Dreadfuls
