Early Victorian Penny Dreadfuls as a Cultural Immune System: 1830-1860

This dissertation investigates how early Victorian penny dreadfuls (c. 1830‑1860) function as a  “cultural immune system” that mediated the era’s anxieties about dissection, urban crime, and asylum confinement. By close reading of texts such as Samuel  Warren’s Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician, Varney the Vampire, The Wild Boys of London, and Sweeney Todd, the dissertation shows how these narratives channelled transgressive impulses into plots that ultimately reaffirmed Victorian hierarchies, thereby inoculating readers against perceived social contagion . Placing these literary practices within their social context, drawing from literary commentary and historical research, the thesis positions penny dreadfuls not as the pernicious corruptions alleged by their contemporaries but as active participants in the Victorian project of social self‑regulation and moral reinforcement .