Thursday, September 3, 2015

Penny Dreadful - Vanessa Ives


The Penny Dreadful was a 19th-century publishing phenomenon. These cheap, sensational, highly illustrated stories were very popular with the Victorian public.
 
In the 1830s, increasing literacy and improving technology saw a boom in cheap fiction for the working classes. ‘Penny bloods’ was the original name for the booklets that, in the 1860s, were renamed Penny Dreadfuls and told stories of adventure, initially of pirates and highwaymen, later concentrating on crime and detection.

Penny Dreadfuls were issued weekly, each ‘number’, or episode, was eight (occasionally 16) pages, with a black-and-white illustration on the top half of the front page. Double columns of text filled the rest, breaking off at the bottom of the final page, even if it was the middle of a sentence.
The bloods were astonishingly successful, creating a vast new readership. Between 1830 and 1850 there were up to 100 publishers of penny-fiction, as well as the many magazines which now wholeheartedly embraced the genre. 

There is some THING within us all.

Penny Dreadful the Showtime show is a powerfully written saga filled with dark mystery and suspense. It lives in a demimonde — a half world between reality and the supernatural — where personal demons from the past can be stronger than vampires, evil spirits and immortal beasts.
Some of literature's most terrifying figures, including Dr. Frankenstein and his Creature, Dorian Gray, and iconic figures from the novel Dracula are lurking in the darkest corners of the city. They are joined by a core of original characters in a new narrative filled with alienation and dread. 

Vanessa Ives

She is poised, mysterious, and utterly composed, Vanessa is a seductive and formidable beauty full of secrets and danger. She is keenly observant - clairvoyant even - as well as an expert medium.  Her supernatural gifts are powerful and useful to those around her, but they are also a heavy burden. Her inner demons are very real to her and everyone around her, and they threaten to destroy her relationships, her sanity and her very life.

"There are things within us all that can never be unleashed" - Vanessa Ives

2 comments:

  1. Put of curiosity... Are you a knife or gouge carver? Your lines are so crisp! I would love to know your secrets! Idlemoon.

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  2. I really try but my lines could be much better than they are. I confess that I carve way too fast because I am always in a hurry to finish. I gouge carve (I use a # 1 and 1V Staedtler) and use a magnifying light when carving at home. If I carve while camping I do not have the extra light available. The light actually makes a big difference.

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