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
By focusing solely on Yakov’s death yet hinting at the disappearances of other boys, he had left the article open-ended like a penny dreadful.
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
In the 19th century, a penny-dreadful series called The Mysteries of London ran to 4.5m words over 12 years.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 19, 2010
The performance was sufficiently blood-curdling to satisfy the most exacting reader of a penny-dreadful.
From My Memories of Eighty Years by Depew, Chauncey M. (Chauncey Mitchell)
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.
