Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The young J. M. Barrie struggled unsuccessfully to write penny-dreadfuls long before he took refuge in the arms of Peter Pan.

From Time Magazine Archive

Dirty, ragged, hideously misprinted, sometimes illustrated with pictures that had nothing to do with the text, the penny-dreadfuls had many of the virtues of naked imagination, all the vices of standardized hack work.

From Time Magazine Archive

While a depressing share of these were just penny-dreadfuls at a quarter, there was also plenty of good reading.

From Time Magazine Archive

And you, friend Callow, who have blunted your palate by swallowing the Cayenne pepper of the penny-dreadfuls, you wish me to make this night exciting by a hand-to-hand contest between Ralph and a robber.

From The Hoosier Schoolmaster A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana by Eggleston, Edward

He would do his best to inscribe a circle and then emboss it with perfectly upright hair, as though the person in question had just been perusing the most stirring of penny-dreadfuls.

From The Prairie Child by Ward. E. F. (Edmund Franklin)