penny dreadful
noun
A cheap, sensational comic or storybook: [as modifier]: penny dreadful comics...
- To a Victorian audience it would have been even more moving, for on close inspection she is no Greek maiden, but a late-Victorian English rose whose predicament is straight from the pages of a penny dreadful or pocket novella.
- In Anthony Trollope's short story The Spotted Dog, one of the characters visits the editor of a Victorian penny dreadful in his office.
- The image was burned, like something out of a Victorian penny dreadful, into my mind.
Origin
Late 19th century: so named because the original cost was one penny.