or -dreadful, subs. phr. (literary).—A sensation novel sold at a shilling: a fashion initiated (1887) by The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, by Mr. Fergus Hume: cf. PENNY-AWFUL.
1885. Athenæum, 14 Nov., 638. Mr. R. L. Stevenson is writing another ‘SHILLING DREADFUL,’ in which supernatural machinery will be employed.
1887. Illustrated London News, 17 Sept., 349, 1. The three-volume novel may be dying out, as they tell us; but we have the SHILLING SHOCKER rampant among us.
1890. Academy, 22 Feb., 130, 2. I have often wondered why the experiences of the Styrian arsenic-eaters … has not been utilised by the writer of some three-volume novel or SHILLING SHOCKER.
