Product details
- ISBN 9780571287871
- Weight: 260g
- Dimensions: 111 x 178mm
- Publication Date: 16 Feb 2012
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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E.S. Turner's first book, published in 1948, is a wholly original, richly researched and uncommonly insightful study of a somewhat disreputable genre: the 'Boys' Weekly' papers commonly known as 'penny dreadfuls.'
'A classic of its kind... [Turner] ploughed through back numbers of the old blood-and-thunder adventure magazines specialising in cliffhanger serials; the young hero would be left hanging over a cliff in a totally impossible situation, which would be easily resolved in the next issue: 'With one bound Jack was free.' Social history had never been as much fun or, with three extra printings in its first week - such was the demand - as profitable.' Jonathan Sale, Guardian
'Some people felt that E.S. Turner may have invented a new kind of book - the popular social history, very British, very funny, but written with a glistening elegance.'
Andrew O'Hagan, London Review of Books
