Story paper

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A story paper is a periodical publication similar to a literary magazine, but featuring illustrations and adventure stories, and aimed towards children and teenagers. Story papers are also known as "penny dreadfuls" because of their low writing standards, but for two centuries they were enjoyed by generations of British schoolchildren.

Contents

1 Format and politics
2 Beginnings
3 Golden Age
4 Silver Age and modern comics
5 See also
6 External links

Format and politics

George Orwell's essay, Boys' Weeklies, outlines the general themes of the story paper in the Golden Age of the early 20th century. As far as Orwell could tell, Britain was the only country in Europe in which story papers were produced. The Gem and The Magnet, the oldest of the bunch, featured long and overwritten school serials, always centered around the same small bunch of characters which any reader could identify with. More recent story papers focused on adventure and intrigue, and had a large teenage readership. According to Orwell, all of the English papers published at the time were stuck in the 1910s and had an underlying Conservative slant, which taught children to be deferent to the upper class. He suggested that Socialist values could be just as exciting if they followed the story paper format.

Story papers were usually aimed towards young boys; girls' stories were printed in separate papers. However, there was a broad overlap in the actual readership of the two.

Beginnings

The first known edition of what would later become known as a "story paper" was The Young Gentleman's Magazine, published in 1777. The first story paper to really take off was The Boys' and Girls' Penny Magazine, first published in September 1832.

In 1866, Charles Stephens began selling Boys of England on the English streets for a penny-- the first "penny dreadful". Story papers in this style minimized the expense of writing in order to produce an extremely cheap product. Strictly speaking, the "penny dreadful" died off by the turn of the century, but this term was still used to refer to story papers throughout their history. The Halfpenny Marvel, first published in 1893, was "founded to counteract the pernicious influences of the Penny Dreadfuls", according to its title page.

Golden Age

Denis Gifford designated the period between World War I and World War II as the "Golden Age" of story papers. Sales of the story papers were at their highest during these years, as were the fecundity of the authors, the range in genre of magazines, and colorful variety of the heroes. The most famous of the story paper heroes, Sexton Blake, reached his apex during these years.

World War II caused chaos in Britain, and among other things the story papers had to be shut down as funds were redirected to the war. This is known as the Dark Ages for story papers, and nearly all of the papers ceased printing in 1939 or 1940.

Silver Age and modern comics

In the 1950s to 1970s, some story papers such as the Eagle briefly flourished, but American comic books and television had a commanding influence on the attentions of British children. Mergers between publishing houses finished off the remaining story papers, or modified them to become comic books.

External links