The Gothic Novel

The Gothic novel saw it's heyday from 1760 to approximately 1820. The generic trappings of the Gothic novel can still be seen in modern ghost and horror novels, films, and comics. The seminal Gothic novel was Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) which survived in print for over 115 editions.

Most Gothic novels are tales of mystery and horror, intended to chill the spine and curdle the blood. They contain a strong element of the supernatural and have all or most of the now familiar topography, sites, props, presences and happenings. . . . The whole apparatus, in fact that has kept the cinema and much third-rate fiction going for years, is to be found in these tales.^{^[1]}

The Gothic novel genre peaked with Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) but was more popularly represented by mountains of cheaply produced, quickly written formulaic works.^{^[2]} By the early 18^th century, British readers had tired of Gothic horror, turning instead in search of novels of the macabre. Meanwhile, the Gothic had traveled to America, where

. . .Charles Brockden Brown attained something approaching fame with a succession of Gothic romances. . . .Brown was to influence Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley and Edgar Allen Poe B one of the most Gothic of all 19^th c. writers of short stories whose long term contribution to the horror story, the tale of suspense and mystery and detective story was immeasurable.^{^[iii]}

All of the components of the Gothic and horror stories would, in time, travel back to Britain to reappear in a particular form of British comic book: Penny Dreadfuls.

In England's Victorian era, penny fiction represented the state of the art of illustrated stories. "Bound in paper and cheaply printed. A penny, from the cost; dreadful, presumably because they were regarded as low, vulgar, sensational, etc.^{^"[iv]} These books were the "Victorian equivalent of the horror comic.^{^"[v]} The Penny Dreadful followed the deeds of a primary character, usually a well-known and notorious individual:

Highwaymen and notorious criminals were popular characters, . . .[including] many fictionalized accounts of Dick Turpin, Jack Rann, Jack Sheppard, and Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street.^{^[vi]}

The Penny Dreadful was characterized by its sensational art and a format which emulated more traditional news sources of the day. As a result, even as far back as the Victorian era, newspapers were generally barren of illustrative material and books which incorporated pictures into storytelling were considered "less than respectable."

In 1890, Alfred Harmsworth's Amalgamated Press introduced Comic Cuts and Chips in an attempt to gain a foothold in the penny market.

. . .he wanted to break into a market dominated by the penny dreadful, with its sensational serials and crude drawings. But his publication was to be priced at a halfpenny B and later A. A. Milne was to say that Harmsworth 'killed the penny dreadful with the ha'penny dreadfuller.' ^{^[vii]}

[1].Cuddon, 381-382.

[2].Cuddon, 382.

[iii].Cuddon, 383.

[iv].Cuddon, 696.

[v].Perry, George and Alan Aldridge. The Penguin Book of Comics. London: Penguin, 1989. 38.

[vi].@The Barry Ono collection of penny dreadfuls.@ The British Library=s Online Information Server. (http://www.bl.uk/collections/epic/onoweb.html) 7/11/00.

[vii].Perry and Aldridge, 47-48.