Jump To:

• penny dreadful
  penny dreadful

  noun

  a cheap, sensational novel of adventure, crime, or violence; dime novel.
• penny-dreadful
  penny-dreadful

  noun

  a cheap, often lurid or sensational book or magazine

penny dreadful

American  

noun

Chiefly British.

• penny dreadfuls
  plural

1. a cheap, sensational novel of adventure, crime, or violence; dime novel.

---

penny-dreadful British  

noun

1. informal a cheap, often lurid or sensational book or magazine

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• penny dreadfuls
  plural

Etymology

Origin of penny dreadful

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

penny dreadful penny-dreadful

That a penny dreadful character originally meant just to shock and sicken becomes instead a pitiable victim is a testament to the power of music to make bad guys, if not good, compelling.

From New York Times ● Feb. 21, 2023

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

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

He knocked the coffin to pieces, crammed them into the fireplace, and very soon had a grand fire blazing, before which he sat and finished his penny-dreadful, and so dropped off into a sound sleep.

From The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch