For those who have read Tempest in a Teapot, you’ll notice the SerendipiTea series includes a lot of Penny Bloods, known as Penny Dreadfuls today. My series is initially set in 1851, and the term Penny Dreadful didn’t take off until the 1860s.
So what were Penny Bloods? They were affordable serialized stories in a range of genres from adventures to detectives. As it turns out the Victorians enjoyed pirates and highwaymen just like modern readers. Penny Bloods in particular were popular with the working class.
All of the penny bloods mentioned in my series, save for Mary and Charlotte’s own writings, were real stories. Some you might recognize because they remain famous in some form, like The String of Pearls, better known today for the Sweeney Todd Demon Barber of Fleet Street movie version featuring Johnny Depp. This is the book that gives Charlotte so much trouble in publishing her own bakery murder story. Another popular Penny Blood is Frankenstein.
I also referenced more obscure penny bloods that readers today aren’t as likely to know. For example Rookwood, which not only included highwayman Dick Turpin, but helped shoot him back to fame along with his horse (named Black Bess in the book). This paved the way for all penny bloods about him that came later as well as a certain scene in Tempest. Side note, Turpin was a real highwayman in the Georgian era (Horrible Histories has a great music video telling his story). Turpin showed up in quite a few Penny Bloods. The most famous staring him was Black Bess, but that wasn’t published until 1866.
Why did I include Penny Bloods in my series? Because Charlotte is a writer and every writer has their favorite genres and stories that inspire them. I find the penny blood era a bit romantic for literature. It was a time when genre templates were being laid down and the masses were not only finally able to afford books, but were eager to gobble them up. As both a writer and history lover my series has been a great way to pay homage to Victorian literature as well as my experiences as a writer and traditional publishing worker.
While Penny Bloods don’t always mesh well with my reading tastes, I find it fascinating to see where some genres got their start and how they’ve evolved since. Sometimes stories got dragged out way for way too long, like with Varney the Vampire, which had 232 chapters. We can thank Varney for introducing some of the vampire tropes that still continue in the genre today. This was also the era of gothic romance getting its start. Without all the great writers of the Victorian era who knows what literature today would look like.