First recorded in 1870–75
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Casey links the newspaper era that parallels the rise of the penny dreadful with the gestation of the 19th century idea of "new journalism."
From Salon ● Jan. 11, 2021
Van Helsing educates Victor in the ways of vampires with the help of a penny dreadful called “Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood,” and then practically adopts the young doctor on the street.
From New York Times ● Jun. 15, 2014
All Victorian life is here, which means the novel itself becomes a kind of freakshow, obsessed with its relationship to its own cleverly chosen epigraphs and the "penny dreadful" tales to which characters allude.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 11, 2012
He refers to his adopted nephew as a “foundling,” as if this were a penny dreadful, which it kind of is.
From Slate ● Jun. 13, 2012
On his bedside table were loose matches, unused stationery, a penny dreadful left facedown at the page he had stopped reading.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
It is the rare as-told-to book, or one created in collaboration with an author-for-hire, that is well-written, but “A Piece of Light” is filled with a superfluity of penny-dreadful prose.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 19, 2018
Which can make the penny-dreadful plot even more giggle-icious.
From New York Times ● Sep. 7, 2017
Instead, she praised it backhandedly as “a shallow masterpiece” that is “overwrought” with “obvious penny-dreadful popular theatrics.”
From Slate ● Nov. 1, 2015
Starts 28 JuneUntil 14 October The whole thing has a penny-dreadful tabloid feel, and Munch might have based it on a grisly story in a Norwegian newspaper.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 25, 2012
Why did he not now emulate the penny-dreadful heroes and say "My darling!"
From The Treasure of Heaven A Romance of Riches by Corelli, Marie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
