Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 76 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 76: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis This is a page of running prose from a Victorian penny dreadful serial titled *Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil* (page 60). The text describes a dramatic moment in which a female character—apparently named Dare—discovers an emptied, ransacked room. She kneels in distress, praying urgently ("O God, don't let it be!"), then stumbles onto a balcony to find the furniture stripped away, the hearth filled with black cinders, and everything "dismantled" and "desolate." The passage culminates in her losing consciousness for the first time in her life. The prose is highly melodramatic, typical of sensation fiction aimed at working-class Victorian readers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
60 Tom ANDERSON, DarRE-DEVIL knees now! “O God, don’t let it be! Lord of Life and Death — don’t let it be!”’ She stumbled out into the bal- cony. The windows of that spacious corner room were wide open to the night, the blast, and the rising moon. The floor was bare; the furnishings gone, except the stately rose- wood bedstead, which, stripped of everything else, still up- bore its tremendous canopy — from which the silk hang- ings had been wrenched away. Black cinders heaped the hearth, and blew about the chamber. Dismantled. Empty and desolate. MOhlaltus trae) For the first time in her life, Dare fell down in a dead aint. ECONMMIEOOOKSa(e© m