Penny Dreadfuls

Penny dreadfuls - old editorials, make more modern- tell the story

https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/guildhall-library/collections/Pages/Bloods-and-Penny-Dreadfuls.aspx

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/penny-dreadful-the-flying-dutchman

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/penny-dreadfuls



The Flying Dutchman

• 'The illustrations were an essential element, as much an advertising tool as art. One regular reader said, ‘You see’s an engraving of a man hung up, burning over a fire, and some…go mad if they couldn’t learn what he’d been doing, who he was, and all about him.’ It is not surprising, therefore, that one publisher’s standing instruction to his illustrators was, ‘more blood – much more blood!’'
• 'One of the most prolific writers of penny dreadfuls was Thomas Peckett Prest (1810–1859). The Flying Dutchman; or, the Demon Ship of 1839 was not the only, or the first, book version of the folk tale that was turned by composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) into an opera two years later (inspired by another source). Stories of ghost ships had a long tradition, as in the 1797 poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). However, Prest’s lively version of the tale, full of action and simple characters – and several illustrations – is in a much more populist vein.'