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About The Penny Bloods
Tales from the Penny Bloods presents a series of audio shows done in the tradition of "old time radio plays." These include adaptions of stories from prestigious Victorian gift annuals like the Keepsake and Forget-Me-Not, and from popular magazines like Charles Dickens's All the Year Round and Household Words.
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Along the way, of course, our programs will also feature stories from the so-called "Penny Bloods" or "Penny Dreadfuls," (think G. W. M. Reynolds's Mysteries of London), bringing you thrilling tales in which London's high society meets the city's underworld.
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Our episodes will entertain you with adventures and romances, ghosts and criminals, with a dash of comedy thrown in.
The Elixir of Life
(as heard on KCBP-FM Radio Theatre)
An exciting new episode, continuing our 'Mummy' season with a fun-packed farce by Arnold Schmidt, based on a comic play by William Bayle Bernard from 1833 : The Elixir of Life.
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Professor Augustus Mondragon is an avid collector of antiquities - including Egyptian mummies! The prize of his collection is a sarcophagus - alas, it is empty! But Sir Charles has a mummy to spare - and so does Captain Bantam. What's more, there is an elixir that will bring the mummy back to life.
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Capers and chaos, drunken mummies, with a touch of romance in this vaudevillean comedy!
A thrilling new trilogy, continuing our 'Mummy' season with Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars, adapted by Arnold Schmidt and Julia Warren, based on Stoker's novel from 1903.
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Malcolm Murray is awoken in the middle of the night by a mysterious and desperate call for help from Margaret Trelawney - and so begins a journey into the ancient past as well as the present, filled with mysticism and ancient magic....
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Haunting and adventurous by turns, with treasure hunts, chases through the desert, ancient magic and through it all the haunting presence of Queen Tera, in this mystical and mystifying tale from gothic master Bram Stoker.
Tales from the Penny Bloods is a series of
radio plays based on stories from popular
19th-century magazines. We hope you'll enjoy these tales of crime & the supernatural, romance
& adventure, with a few laughs along the way.
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Teachers: you'll also find original texts,
notes, vocabulary, & lesson plans.
Upcoming episodes
Wayfarers All
From mummies to another kind of wandering spirit, this time we travel from the moors of Northumbria to the Alps of Switzerland in this tale within a tale, adapted for audio by Julia Warren from short stories by Amelia B. Edwards.
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Hallucination or horrifying encounter? James Murray, barrister at law, and recovering from a life-threatening accident, is convinced he experienced what he describes to the sceptical doctor who attends him.
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Phantom carriages and a warning from the beyond - real or imagined? Nothing is quite as it seems in this most haunting episode yet, coming soon!
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Earlier
Episodes
Catch up on all the earlier episodes here...
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About the Victorians
British Library:
Posters, newspapers, illustrations and much more, along with expert articles. (www.bl.uk/victorian-britain)
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Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century:
A respected, open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal covering areas like Romantic and Victorian History, Literature, Musicology, Social History, Visual Culture, etc. (https://19.bbk.ac.uk/)
Victorian History Resources:
Elon University's fine site. (elon.libguides.com/Victorian_History/Internet_Resources)
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Victorian Web:
Great all-round information about lit, history, social history, plus other links. (victorianweb.org)
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About the Penny Bloods
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Dittmer, Nicole C. Monstrous Women and Ecofeminism in the Victorian Gothic, 1837–1871. (https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666900804/Monstrous-Women-and-Ecofeminism-in-the-Victorian-Gothic)
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This books examines the popular Gothic female “monster” figure in early-to-mid-Victorian literature in the context of medical science, ecofeminism, and social history.
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Dittmer, Nicole C., ed. Penny Bloods: Gothic Tales of Dangerous Women. (https://www.waterstones.com/book/penny-bloods/nicole-c-dittmer/9780712354189)
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Includes a selection of famous and obscure tales from nineteenth-century periodicals which feature "dangerous" female characters, among them witches, femme fatales, vampire mistresses and deadly criminals.
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