Penny Dreadfuls

Now this is the kind of reading I can get behind!

The Essential Man’s Library: 50 Fictional Adventure Books Edition

A lot of these books are probably terrible, and of no redeeming social importance, but I love them anyway.

G. K. Chesterton did too, and he wrote a defense of Penny Dreadfuls, the cheap, trashy books the Victorian era. I especially like the part where Chesterton remarks that the homeless children of London clearly commited petty crimes under the malign influence of things they had read! A massive piece of common sense, that. Penny dreadfuls are good for the soul.