From the exhibition
The Flag of Our Union
· Saturday, April 8, 1854
This penny serial presents 'Ivan the Serf,' a melodramatic tale of Russia, Turkey, and the Caucasus by Austin C. Burdick. The woodcut illustration depicts a turbaned figure in exotic dress. Such serials, priced at a few pence, flooded British streets from the 1830s onward, offering factory workers and servants weekly installments of crime, supernatural horror, and imperial adventure. These chapbooks directly preceded modern comics, sharing their episodic structure, lurid imagery, and appetite for melodrama over literary refinement.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
