Penny dreadfuls - have you heard of them?
By Judy Evans
@JudyEv (339583)
Rockingham, Australia
May 28, 2022 6:29am CST
I don’t have a photo to go with this discussion so here’s a tree I like. It's a meleleuca or paperbark.
I was going to ask how many myLotters had heard of the term ‘penny dreadful’ but I guess many have. I had no idea there was a TV series of that name until I googled the term.
In my day, a penny dreadful was a cheap, usually badly written, novel. Originally, it was a story published in weekly stories of 8 to 16 pages. The subject matter was usually sensational in nature. These books were first published in the 1830s and by the 1860s/70s, over a million periodicals were sold each week. They have been called the Victorian equivalent of video games.
The whole topic came to mind when I told my husband I could read him like a book, like a penny dreadful in fact. Luckily, he thought that was pretty hilarious. It sounds quite unkind when I write it now but it was funny at the time.
28 people like this
28 responses
@DaddyEvil (137257)
• United States
28 May 22
I've read about them in older novels and in articles talking about something from the 1800s or 1900s. I didn't know there was a TV series called that.
I can see why that would delight and amuse your hubby. He obviously took it as the teasing it was meant to be. (He knows you as well as you know him. 
)
)3 people like this
Then I'd say you two are well-matched. 
@aninditasen (16381)
• Raurkela, India
28 May 22
I do read English novels but I haven't read this one.
2 people like this
@JudyEv (339583)
• Rockingham, Australia
30 May 22
@aninditasen I read some of Thomas Hardy's too and Jane Austen was another reader I liked.
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@aninditasen (16381)
• Raurkela, India
29 May 22
@JudyEv I used to read mills and boons and Denis Robins as a teenaged girl. As I grew up I started reading classics written by Thomas Hardy and modern American writers whose names I have forgotten now.
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@LindaOHio (178125)
• United States
29 May 22
I actually didn't know what a penny dreadful was. I only know about the movie and Broadway play. Hope you have a great day. BTW, that's a gorgeous tree.
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@snowy22315 (180490)
• United States
31 May 22
Have heard the name, did not know what they were!
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@xstitcher (32416)
• Petaluma, California
29 May 22
I had heard of penny dreadfuls, but I don't think I knew exactly what they were.
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@arunima25 (87770)
• Bangalore, India
28 May 22
It's something new I learnt here today. I never heard of that phrase. Glad that Vince found it hilarious and didn't take it in a wrong way.
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@arunima25 (87770)
• Bangalore, India
31 May 22
@JudyEv It's the same here in our relationship. We say a lot of such things to each other in good humour.
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@VictorFrankenstein (243)
• United Kingdom
29 May 22
In some ways, a precursor to pulp magazines, comics and the modern paperback industry. I saw a documentary on YouTube about them a few years ago, and the guy making it reckoned they probably contributed to literacy in Victorian times. You're probably aware that there were a lot of street gangs in 19th Century cites, made up of poor "urchins". Not much in the way of formal education, and having very little money, the whole gang would club together to buy a penny dreadful when it came out. Then they'd gather round while the best reader in the gang read the story out loud to the rest of them. Being the "designated reader" was one way of gaining status in the gang, so the kids would be motivated to try their best to get better at reading themselves, in hopes of getting the job.
2 people like this
@GardenGerty (160624)
• United States
28 May 22
I have heard the term before. I love your tree picture. That is where we get "tea tree oil" right?It is much prettier than I had imagined.
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@JudyEv (339583)
• Rockingham, Australia
29 May 22
I didn't think this qualified as a true tea tree but apparently it does. This is a particularly beautiful specimen. It must have been a good year for meleleucas.
@Jenaisle (14078)
• Philippines
29 May 22
I never heard of such a term. Now I know. If it's badly written, then fewer people should prefer reading it. But sometimes, these badly written but sensational stories are often viral.
Perhaps, it tells a statement of our times, nowadays? 
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@JudyEv (339583)
• Rockingham, Australia
29 May 22
These were produced well before the years of computers or the internet. However, there is still a lot of rubbish published, isn't there?
@MarshaMusselman (38865)
• Midland, Michigan
29 May 22
I've never heard the term nor seen the show but I did watch a new series last year which portrayed the victorian era and a young lady wrote a gossip column which came out weekly. Everyone wanted to read it, or at least the women did even the Queen. I think it was free though.
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