This penny weekly serialized fiction for working-class readers hungry for melodrama and sensation. The cover illustration depicts "Solonis Discovering Medora"—a scene of confrontation between figures in period dress, including a Black servant. Such publications, priced at four cents, competed fiercely for circulation through lurid woodcut illustrations and serialized stories of crime, passion, and supernatural horror. These cheap weeklies and their cousins the penny bloods formed the direct ancestor of modern comic books, establishing the formula of visual narrative, episodic storytelling, and mass production for working audiences that persists today.
About this artifact
- Date
- Saturday, November 19, 1859
- 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.