London, mid-19th century. Dark alleys swallowed by thick fog and smoke drifting through the industrial scenery, lit only by the glow of a gas lamp. In working-class districts, far from the Victorian upper class, page after page of mystery and horror stories spread through the streets. Before the space monsters of American pulp fiction and the gore horror of cinema, there were the gothic demons of the British Penny Dreadfuls. They were the analogue blockbusters of their time, built on cheap and accessible media with stories that horrified the moralist elite, proving that fear is one of the most profitable goods on the market.
To understand the birth of what we could call more “modern” horror, we need to go back to the Victorian era, to the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the spread of literacy. A new class of readers appeared here: factory workers and urban youth. These were people who could read, but could not afford a bound novel by Charles Dickens or Mary Shelley, which cost a small fortune. A single volume could cost roughly a week’s wages. To work around this, books were sold in cheaper instalments aimed at urban workers. For the first time, many people could spend part of their money on entertainment, something previously scarce and mostly tied to survival.
The printing industry noticed this gap and created a wonderful solution: the Penny Dreadfuls.
What were Penny Dreadfuls?
In short, Penny Dreadfuls were weekly pamphlets with around eight pages or more, printed on the worst paper available at the time — cheap wood pulp paper that fell apart easily — and illustrated with dramatic engravings. The price was exactly what the name promised: a single penny. The term itself was originally a derogatory way of referring to these stories, or to this model of producing and distributing cheap novels full of absurd and sensationalist content, though the name eventually stuck.
The format of the Penny Dreadfuls was not very different from the broadsides published in the United Kingdom, usually featuring sensational illustrations on the front depicting crimes or disturbing scenes.
Now, while the paper quality was dreadful, the content was gold for fans of horror stories, thrillers, serial killers, criminals, violence, and anything drifting towards the macabre. In truth, it was a mix of gothic romance, real crimes—yes, real crimes—and urban folklore. Since authors were usually paid by the line or by the word, much like some writers still are today, the stories became packed with adjectives, dramatic phrasing, and vivid atmospheric descriptions. At first, many tales were direct rewrites of gothic classics or fictionalised versions of the lives of famous criminals, especially highwaymen. Other publications were simply blatant copies of better-known and more expensive stories.
Naturally, the Victorian elite reacted with outrage. Traditional newspapers blamed Penny Dreadfuls for juvenile delinquency, moral decay, and countless other social problems. The panic looked very similar to the backlash horror films faced from the 1930s onwards, comic books in the 1950s, and violent video games in the 1990s.
Examples of Penny Dreadfuls
Below are some of the most famous entries from the Penny Dreadful era:
The String of Pearls (1846)
This story introduced the character Sweeney Todd, the infamous demon barber of Fleet Street. In the tale, Sweeney Todd would “take care” of his victims’ throats, if you catch my meaning, and hand the bodies over to Mrs Lovett, who used the meat to fill her pies and sell them in the bakery next door.
Varney the Vampire (1845)
Varney the Vampire is a loosely connected story set across different historical periods and locations, and yes, it really is confusing. Even the question of whether Varney is actually a vampire remains debatable, since the author himself never seemed entirely sure what he was writing, though the character does describe himself as cursed with vampirism. Varney is interesting because he shows how many of these stories were produced. In many cases, they were never planned beyond the original premise and relied heavily on improvisation from the writers. The story was later published as a book in 1847 with 876 pages, so it genuinely feels as if the author was simply making it up as he went along. Still, this fellow ended up influencing Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which says enough on its own.
Black Bess; or, the Knight of the Road (1860)
This story is a highly romanticised and fictionalised version of the life of Dick Turpin, a real 18th-century highwayman, and his loyal black mare, Bess. It is essentially a serialised adventure following Turpin’s exploits and escapes, stretching across at least 2,000 pages and becoming one of the biggest successes of the Penny Dreadful era.
Spring-heeled Jack, The Terror of London
Take a look at our article on Spring-heeled Jack.
Spring-heeled Jack was an urban legend that haunted the United Kingdom: a supposed creature, or perhaps just a cunning man, who attacked citizens in the dark alleys of London. His fictional version carried the image of a monster at times and an anti-hero at others, dressed in a cape and tight-fitting clothes, armed with metal claws and glowing eyes. Naturally, he also possessed the ability to leap across rooftops and reach the height of his victims’ windows. In many ways, he feels like an ancestor of the modern superhero image—a Victorian Batman, if you will. Spring-heeled Jack became so popular that later serials turned him into an alter ego fighting corrupt figures as a masked anti-hero.
Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf (1846)
Here we have a story set in Germany, where a peasant named Wagner makes a pact with the devil Mephistopheles in exchange for youth and vitality, only to be cursed into transforming into a starving werewolf once a month. A premise like that practically sells itself—and it did, earning as much money as renowned authors of the time.
Sawney Beane: The Man-Eater of Midlothian
This one is difficult to stomach. It is based on a semi-real tale about a deeply disturbing clan living in Scotland that supposedly spent around 25 years ambushing and “digesting” unfortunate travellers. If modern slashers seem excessive to you, imagine their ancestor. Of course, the story is not entirely true, and there is already a broad consensus that the legend was created to portray Scottish people as barbarians.
As you can see, many of these pamphlets drew inspiration from legends or real events, heavily romanticised to heighten the emotional impact on readers. Still, many were also shameless copies of famous books, as mentioned earlier. Since copyright laws were not yet especially strict, the mostly anonymous Penny Dreadful writers freely adapted classics into their own versions. One example is the copy of Oliver Twist titled Oliver Twiss—and no, I am not joking. The same thing happened with The Pickwick Papers, which became Penny Pickwick.
Poor Dickens!
The End of the Penny Dreadfuls
As the 19th century drew to a close, the Penny Dreadful craze began to cool in the United Kingdom for several reasons, including pressure from religious and moralist groups, alongside the rise of cleaner and more respectable popular newspapers. Around the 1890s, new forms of literature also appeared to compete with them, such as comic magazines and other serial stories viewed as more respectable, since Penny Dreadfuls had gained a reputation for encouraging criminal behaviour. That idea did not last especially long, though, because many of these supposedly moral publications quickly fell into the same kinds of narratives found in the Penny Dreadfuls themselves.
Monthly magazines also became more popular, while novels gradually grew cheaper and started using better-quality, longer-lasting materials, which slowly replaced the serial pamphlet format. Readers exhausted by the formula began looking towards less commercial stories, while some publishers shifted their focus towards younger audiences. Still, everything reaches its end eventually. Though when I say it ended, I do not mean it died. Penny Dreadfuls simply transformed into something else.
By the 1860s, the United States had already created its own adapted version: the Dime Novels. These publications focused on American mythology—cowboys above all else—alongside stories about legendary outlaws and, to be fair, a few detectives as well. Some of these Dime Novels were later rewritten and published in the United Kingdom. The model stayed practically identical: mass production, fast railway distribution, and stories meant to be consumed quickly and, in some sense, discarded afterwards.
This would continue into what we now call the Pulp era, which began around 1896 with the same commercial spirit: frantic production, genre-focused stories, cheap paper, and very low prices ranging from ten to twenty-five cents. By the 1920s, the United States was already facing rapid urbanisation and many social issues linked to Prohibition, which increased the demand for literature as cheap entertainment. It was in this climate that pulp fiction exploded into countless fragmented titles, relying on many of the same techniques, especially loud and shocking covers.
The Legacy of a Penny
There is not much room to dismiss the legacy of the Penny Dreadfuls. To describe them as disposable cheap fiction is to ignore one of the biggest cultural revolutions in Western history. Suddenly, an entire population had stories within reach, produced in massive quantities and turning reading into a habit for the masses. Literature had once belonged almost exclusively to aristocrats.
This model also shaped the way stories were consumed, especially through the use of cliffhangers. Since the stories were published weekly and writers needed to guarantee sales for the next issue, they refined the art of ending chapters on dramatic hooks that kept readers coming back.
For me, the characters may be the most fascinating part of the Penny Dreadfuls. From adventurous criminals to seductive vampires, from cunning masterminds to outright monsters, these stories became factories of myth-making. Since so much was improvised, the characters needed to feel memorable and intriguing enough to hold the audience’s attention.
In the end, Penny Dreadfuls taught us that horror, crime, and fantasy do not need the approval of high criticism to become immortal.
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