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Ela
is an example of a highly successful penny dreadful. The eighteenth
edition (the earliest in the British Library) boasted a weekly sale
of 30,000 copies. Publication extended to 104 numbers over two years,
the melodramatic plot prolonged by devices such as interpolated
stories and the late introduction of new subplots. Scenes from contemporary
melodramas influenced the relatively good quality woodcut illustrations,
some signed by J. Pickering, which provide what is almost a comic
strip summary of the plot.
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