A woodcut illustration depicts a supernatural scene: a wizard's ghost or spirit rises from an open coffin while a robed figure stands witness in a moonlit landscape. This serialized story appeared in Franklin's Miscellany, a penny publication aimed at working-class Victorian readers hungry for sensation, mystery, and the macabre. Such cheap serials—ancestor to modern comics—delivered melodrama and gothic thrills in affordable weekly installments, offering escape into worlds of crime, the supernatural, and moral peril. These publications reached audiences excluded from expensive literature, shaping popular taste and narrative form for generations to come.
About this artifact
- Date
- September 7, 1839
- Rights
- Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
- Restoration
- Digitally restored and hosted by comicbooks.com.
Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.