James Malcolm Rymer, Penny Fiction, and the Family

James Malcolm Rymer, Penny Fiction, and the Family is the first monograph focusing on Sweeney Todd and Varney the Vampyre's creator James Malcolm Rymer (1814-1884). It argues that Rymer wrote his so-called 'penny bloods' and 'dreadfuls' for and about British urban working families. In the 1840s, the notion of the family acquired unprecedented prominence and radical potential. Raised in an artisanal artistic-literary family, Rymer wrote for and edited family magazines early in that genre's h ...