In this episode I'm joined by Manon Burz-Labrande, who researches into the circulation of penny bloods and penny dreadfuls. We talk about how her research looks at how there are issues around canonicity, due to many publications being hidden still, meaning we return to the 'classics' . We observe how there were different ways of circulation beyond publishing, and how contemporary sources like Henry Mayhew reported on this. This leads to the different ways of consuming stories, communal reading, giving and lending books, and oral storytelling traditions.

About my guest: Manon Burz-Labrande is a doctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Vienna, Austria. Specialising in Victorian popular literature and culture, her PhD focuses on the exploration of the concept of circulation in and of the penny bloods and penny dreadfuls, through a literary and cultural analysis of their literary content, the discourses they triggered in nineteenth-century criticism, their place in the Victorian literary landscape and their circulation into Neo-Victorian fiction. She has written articles and reviews for Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, Polysèmes, Revenant Journal and Wilkie Collins Journal, entries for the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing (ed. Lesa Scholl), and two chapters in upcoming edited collections on Victorian popular fiction. Her broader research interests include sound studies and the Gothic, and in 2021 she co-edited a special issue for Short Fiction in Theory & Practice entitled “More than Meets the Ear: Sound & Short Fiction.” She is also the managing editor of the forthcoming London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia, edited by Kevin A. Morrison (McFarland, 2022).

For more information on Manon's work, check out the details below:

https://manonburzlabrande.com/

Spectral Sounds: Unquiet Tales of Acoustic Weird (part of British Library Tales of the Weird) - out in September 2022

Check out Manon's suggestions:

Vivian Shaw - Strange Practice
Ambrose Perry - The Way of All Flesh
E.S. Thomson - Beloved Poison

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

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