The Skeleton Crew or Wildfire Ned by Anonymous is a captivating tale of courage, friendship, and adventure in the wild west. This classic novel offers a window into a bygone era filled with danger, excitement, and timeless human values. Step into the boots of Wildfire Ned and his loyal Skeleton Crew as they traverse the unforgiving landscape, face thrilling challenges, and form bonds that are stronger than the harshest desert sun. This story captures the spirit of the old west like no other. The Skeleton Crew or Wildfire Ned is more than just an adventure novel. It's a journey into a time of legends and heroes. Whether you're a fan of westerns or just love a good story, this book will transport you to a world where courage, loyalty, and grit are the law of the land.

Using a broad array of historical and literary sources, this book presents an unprecedented detailed history of the superhero and its development across the course of human history. How has the concept of the superhero developed over time? How has humanity's idealization of heroes with superhuman powers changed across millennia—and what superhero themes remain constant? Why does the idea of a superhero remain so powerful and relevant in the modern context, when our real-life technological capabilities arguably surpass the imagined superpowers of superheroes of the past? The Evolution of the Costumed Avenger: The 4,000-Year History of the Superhero is the first complete history of superheroes that thoroughly traces the development of superheroes, from their beginning in 2100 B.C.E. with the Epic of Gilgamesh to their fully entrenched status in modern pop culture and the comic book and graphic novel worlds. The book documents how the two modern superhero archetypes—the Costumed Avengers and the superhuman Supermen—can be traced back more than two centuries; turns a critical, evaluative eye upon the post-Superman history of the superhero; and shows how modern superheroes were created and influenced by sources as various as Egyptian poems, biblical heroes, medieval epics, Elizabethan urban legends, Jacobean masques, Gothic novels, dime novels, the Molly Maguires, the Ku Klux Klan, and pulp magazines. This work serves undergraduate or graduate students writing papers, professors or independent scholars, and anyone interested in learning about superheroes.

This book explores Victorian readers’ consumption of a wide array of reading matter. Established scholars and emerging researchers examine nineteenth-century audience encounters with print culture material such as periodicals, books in series, cheap serials, and broadside ballads. Two key strands of enquiry run through the volume. First, these studies of historical readership during the Victorian period look to recover the motivations or desired returns that underpinned these audiences’ engagement with this reading matter. Second, contributors investigate how nineteenth-century reading and consumption of print was framed and/or shaped by contemporaneous engagement with content disseminated in other media like advertising, the stage, exhibitions, and oral culture.

E.S. Turner's first book, published in 1948, is a wholly original, richly researched and uncommonly insightful study of a somewhat disreputable genre: the 'Boys' Weekly' papers commonly known as 'penny dreadfuls.' 'A classic of its kind... [Turner] ploughed through back numbers of the old blood-and-thunder adventure magazines specialising in cliffhanger serials; the young hero would be left hanging over a cliff in a totally impossible situation, which would be easily resolved in the next issue: 'With one bound Jack was free.' Social history had never been as much fun or, with three extra printings in its first week - such was the demand - as profitable.' Jonathan Sale, Guardian 'Some people felt that E.S. Turner may have invented a new kind of book - the popular social history, very British, very funny, but written with a glistening elegance.' Andrew O'Hagan, London Review of Books

This edited collection of essays details a wide-ranging selection of some of the most sensationally successful theatre productions of the long Victorian era, the real "blockbusters" of the age. Ranging from the world of operetta and music hall to spectacular drama and sensational melodrama, the productions included provide the reader with definitive proof that the phenomenon of the "smash hit" show is not restricted to modern Broadway. This is a world that encompassed the ground-breaking stage technology of Ben Hur, the wide political impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the sheer creative originality of L'Enfant Prodigue. Supporting the "star" system, productions featured some of the greatest names of the period - Sir Henry Irving, Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson, James O'Neill and Dion Boucicault. This was the very dawning of a new media age, which saw many of the productions transfer to the new world of silent cinema for the very first time

This enormous volume is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of fantastic literature of the nineteenth century. From detective fiction to historical novels, from well-known authors like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, to Russian newspaper serials and Chinese martial arts novels, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASTIC VICTORIANA is a truly exhaustive look at every aspect of fantastic literature in the days of Queen Victoria. Readers of science fiction and fantasy will be surprised to find here the roots of genres thought to be strictly contemporary, and students of literature will be amazed at the breadth and scope of writings produced in the Victoriana era. This is an invaluable reference, and truly one-of-a-kind.