ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at nineteenth-century fiction aimed at working-class readers. It begins with the part-published “penny dreadfuls” of the 1830s and 1840s, and considers the factors that underpinned their success, and the extent to which they both resembled and differed from novels written for the middle-class public. The cheap periodical press is examined next, such publications as the London Journal and Halfpenny Journal offering another important source of popular fiction. After a brief discussion of the role of the popular stage in mediating successful novels to working-class audiences, the chapter concludes with a survey of the popular fiction market at the end of the century, by which time the “penny dreadful” had converged with the American “dime novel.”
