Though it comprised the most circulated and consumed artefacts of the nineteenth-century literary marketplace, Gothic ‘street’ fiction nonetheless has occupied a critical blindspot in literary histories. Notwithstanding their evanescence, short, cheap Gothic works proliferated from the 1770s to the 1880s, appearing in millions of copies to satisfy the demands of a rapidly expanding reading public. This chapter explores the development of street literature, from its early, short bluebook format (1780–1830) to its later incarnation as the penny blood serial (1840–1870). The origins of street Gothic in prose forms and the print culture dynamics are considered, alongside close analysis of key themes, plots and tropes of the bluebooks and penny bloods. The chapter concludes by considering the twilight of street Gothic, with the emergence of the penny dreadful (1860–1900), which was aimed at a juvenile male audience. While literary scholarship has dismissed both as minor, derivative examples of Gothic literature, the chapter argues for the significant contribution made by a rich and dynamic network of authors and publishers.

This chapter explores the development of a popular print culture in Ireland during the decades between 1830 and 1880, as well as the growth of an audience for such publications. It traces the history of the technological and legislative changes – such as the arrival of steam presses and the abolition of stamp and paper taxes – necessary for a popular press to emerge, as well as the social and political landscape which enabled an expanded readership to develop. In particular, the chapter examines the role of the radical political press in actively developing that readership through both its network of reading rooms across Ireland and its publishing of newspapers and juvenile story papers, including the Nation newspaper, the Irish Fireside Magazine, Young Ireland and the Shamrock magazine. These publications were intended to establish an imaginative link between popular entertainment and radical politics, especially through the use of Irish history and historical fiction in order to create a print culture which created and reinforced a national Irish audience for both the popular press and mass political movements.