Bruce Peel Special Collections

The popularity of literary fiction by Charles Dickens and others in inexpensive paperback parts in the 1830s and 1840s inspired new formats for cheaply-produced popular literature. Penny-priced publications initially covered a range of subjects, including pirated and condensed versions of major novels by Dickens and others, but soon they became closely connected with the British craze for Gothic romance and “true crime” stories. The increasingly melodramatic content and garish cover illustrations combined with poor production quality led these inexpensive publications to become known as “penny dreadfuls” (or “shilling shockers”). By the later decades of the nineteenth century, the penny dreadful (in Britain) increasingly became associated with popular adventure stories for boys. The “dime novel” and the "nickel weekly" are the American equivalents. Introduced in the 1860s, American dime novels quickly became associated with frontier adventure stories. By the 1870s, readers could find sensationalized versions of detective stories, romances, urban outlaw tales, and "rags-to-riches" stories in this format. Bruce Peel Special Collections has a small sampling of penny dreadfuls and shilling shockers as well as a representative collection of dime novels (including full runs of the Deadwood Dick Library and Beadle's Frontier Series). 

Getting started: Search for penny dreadfuls or shilling shockers in the University of Alberta Library catalogue, as one would search for other published materials. The Peel library’s collection of dime novels is an exception to this rule, i.e. these modest publications are not in the library catalogue. Instead, the collection can be explored using the online finding aid. For more information about research in the Peel library, see Finding and Requesting Peel Library Materials.

Collection Formats: 19th Century, Ephemera -- click to see other collections with this format