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Jul. 27th, 2005 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusThe life of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street began as a back page news account which, along with his deadly razors and “worst pies in London,” quickly passed into urban legend. He reemerged in a popular 1847 “penny dreadful” that captured the imagination of Victorian teens, long before Sondheim’s Tony award-winning play.
The dark, sensationalistic flavor of these “penny dreadfuls” fed the Victorian appetite for all things morbid, and their influence can still be seen in everything from Charles Dickens to Bram Stoker. With 19th century improvements in printing technology, Fleet Street printers were able to churn out eight-page dime novels when there was no other literature for young adults. Their detailed illustrated covers were almost as important as the story, since their readership’s literacy tended to be a tad sketchy. The colorful and often lurid tales were sold out of tobacco and sweetshops to Victorian era teens. Boys even formed clubs to pool their resources to buy the next exciting chapter, as they inevitably ended on a cliff-hanger.
To say critics loathed the "penny dreadful" would vastly understate the case. James Greenwood in 1874 called them a "plague" of poisonous literature. “Nasty-feeling, nasty-looking packets every one of them, and, considering the virulent nature of their contents, their most admirable feature is their extremely limited size.”
The story that introduced fans to the murderous Sweeney Todd is ironically the most long-lived and is now the signature piece for the penny dreadful. But Victorian pulp fiction spanned a variety of genres, sharing the same stock characters: the first ever was a romance written by Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, “Maleaska: Indian Wife of the White Hunter.” There were also westerns (“The Half-Blood: The Stalking Panther”), and Jules Verne copycats featuring preposterous balloons bound for the moon (“Two Boys’ Trip To An Unknown Planet”).
Steven Sondheim discovered the story in 1973 while rehearsing for a London production of Gypsy starring Angela Lansbury. Christopher Bond had rewritten the story adding layers of complexity to the ever-so-evil barber. Says Flora Roberts, "they had a piano player in the lobby and people drinking beer and eating meat pies ... It was such a fun atmosphere, very colorful. And I immediately saw why Steve was excited."
The dark, sensationalistic flavor of these “penny dreadfuls” fed the Victorian appetite for all things morbid, and their influence can still be seen in everything from Charles Dickens to Bram Stoker. With 19th century improvements in printing technology, Fleet Street printers were able to churn out eight-page dime novels when there was no other literature for young adults. Their detailed illustrated covers were almost as important as the story, since their readership’s literacy tended to be a tad sketchy. The colorful and often lurid tales were sold out of tobacco and sweetshops to Victorian era teens. Boys even formed clubs to pool their resources to buy the next exciting chapter, as they inevitably ended on a cliff-hanger.
To say critics loathed the "penny dreadful" would vastly understate the case. James Greenwood in 1874 called them a "plague" of poisonous literature. “Nasty-feeling, nasty-looking packets every one of them, and, considering the virulent nature of their contents, their most admirable feature is their extremely limited size.”
The story that introduced fans to the murderous Sweeney Todd is ironically the most long-lived and is now the signature piece for the penny dreadful. But Victorian pulp fiction spanned a variety of genres, sharing the same stock characters: the first ever was a romance written by Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, “Maleaska: Indian Wife of the White Hunter.” There were also westerns (“The Half-Blood: The Stalking Panther”), and Jules Verne copycats featuring preposterous balloons bound for the moon (“Two Boys’ Trip To An Unknown Planet”).
Steven Sondheim discovered the story in 1973 while rehearsing for a London production of Gypsy starring Angela Lansbury. Christopher Bond had rewritten the story adding layers of complexity to the ever-so-evil barber. Says Flora Roberts, "they had a piano player in the lobby and people drinking beer and eating meat pies ... It was such a fun atmosphere, very colorful. And I immediately saw why Steve was excited."
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Date: 2005-07-27 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 09:15 pm (UTC)That's not the prelude to a confession that I cut throats and make pies, either.
My father was mad on Victorian Melodrama. He actually produced a version of the play (the Pre-Sondheim version) for the amateur stage (it included his designing a tilting chair that sent the victim down the hatch - I had a go on it when I was nine, great fun). I love the Sondheim version, but it provides motivation. In the original he was just ESE!Sweeney.
I'd have queued up for penny dreadfuls, but then my tastes have always been low end.
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Date: 2005-07-27 09:21 pm (UTC)To say critics loathed the "penny dreadful" would vastly understate the case
Oh, God, yes. The late 19th century German term for this genre conveys their disdain for it: Schund- und Schmutzliteratur (it was being lumped together with more explicitly sexual materials, in that category).
To me, the penny dreadfuls are also interesting, because they're one part of a larger commercial culture of recreational entertainment that was expanding very rapidly during that period. More traditional sorts of street performers (jugglers, musicians, puppet shows) were being replaced by an entertainment "industry," which was a new thing in terms of both the scale and the formats used.
I spent two days on late 19th/early 20th century recreational entertainment forms in a course I taught a year ago, on the emergence of European consumer cultures, and could easily have spent weeks on it. So, you've sort of punched a button for me, here. I'm self-indulgent enough to even paste in a quote I found from an English bourgeois observer, who described East End sideshows and freak shows in 1894:
I have no space to describe these establishments in detail. Besides fat women, dwarfs, “living skeletons,” and giants, they contained a number of monstrosities, including “a man with no neck,” and a creature which purported to be a five-legged pig. One attraction, which was alleged to have been brought to this country by Buffalo Bill, was described as “half gorilla and half human being,” and was certainly a most disgusting-looking object. The Whitechapel murders were favourite subjects for representation; and while several show-men merely dabbled in these crimes, so to speak, one enterprising member of the fraternity dealt exhaustively with the whole series by means of illuminated coloured views, which his patrons inspected through peep-holes Jack Sheppard, Charles Peace, and a host of other similar celebrities lived again on the canvas screens.
I adore history of popular culture. I hope you can work out the training problems, and keep producing more of this stuff. Post every assignment, Icarus!
no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 10:50 pm (UTC)I didn't say anything, I just calmly kept working. Glad I'm not her supervisor.
The good news is that she's told me it'll only take a day to train me in me in her job - she just doesn't have that day right now. I trust that assessment and she's planning to do most of that training at the beginning of next week.
Icarus
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Date: 2005-08-04 05:46 am (UTC)