Story paper

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.

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 the colourful variety of the heroes.

[1] George Orwell's essay, Boys' Weeklies, outlines the general themes of the story paper in the "Golden Age".

The Gem and The Magnet, the oldest of their kind, featured school serials always centred on a group of characters any reader could identify with.

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 deferential to the upper-class.