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Penny-Dreadful Hour Podcast
A Feast of Early Victorian Street Literature.
The Penny Dreadful Hour Podcast is a weekly early-Victorian variety show centered around regular readings from one of several old serial “story papers” of the type known as “Penny Blood-and-Thunders” or “Penny Dreadfuls.”
Along the way, we sample liberally from old street literature sources like broadside ballad-sheets, chapbooks, ribald songbooks, true-crime magazines and even published directories of friendly ladies — all dating to the Romantic Age and early Victorian.
You can find the podcast in all the usual places — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, your podcatcher of choice — or, if you’d like to sample the latest episode, here’s a link to it on Spotify.
Looking for the show notes from the latest episode? Got ’em right here. (As of now, they are posted in our Discord server; we’ll be moving them onto the Website soon, though.)
Our Current Dreadfuls:
VARNEY THE VAMPYRE
Varney the Vampire (usually spelled with a Y, Vampyre) is one of the most famous of the penny-dreadful serials. This one has it all: Highway robbers and Italian assassins, grave robbers and resurrection-men, duels, murders, torch-and-pitchfork mobs, corpse reanimation, madhouses, shipwrecks, the Spanish Inquisition — and, of course, a vampire or two!
SWEENEY TODD
Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet-street, is the villain-star of what’s by far the most famous penny-dreadful serial. Originally titled The String of Pearls; or, The Sailor’s Gift: A Domestic Romance, this story introduced the world to evil pie-cook Mrs. Lovett, bloody fake parson Mr. Lupin, and of course Sweeney Todd himself!
HIGHWAYMAN DICK TURPIN
Sympathetic stories of the adventures of the highway robbers of the mid-1700s were among the most popular Dreadfuls, and none were more famous and notorious than Highwayman Dick Turpin and his fabulous midnight-black mare, Black Bess.