A complete, restored issue of Penny Dreadfuls from 1900 — all 38 pages of cheap serialized Victorian sensation fiction — crime, horror, and lurid melodrama, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.

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A complete issue · 38 pages · 1900

Marion Marlowe's Skill, or, A Week as a Private Detective

1900 · Free to read

Marion Marlowe's Skill, or, A Week as a Private Detective — page 2 of 38 — 2 / 38

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About this issue

This 1900 issue features "Marion Marlowe's Skill" by Grace Shirley, a detective mystery serial. The opening chapters introduce two criminal schemes operating in parallel. In Chapter I, siblings Terence and Liz O'Connell—who live squalidly despite wearing fine clothes and diamonds—plot to swindle a wealthy mark. Liz proposes a con targeting Marion Marlowe, a seventeen-year-old country girl from Connecticut living at the Rosedale Hotel while training her voice for grand opera under Madame Leopold. Liz plans to stage an elaborate hardship tale to manipulate Marion's sympathies and extract her five-thousand-dollar reward money. Chapter II shifts to Marion's perspective in a romantic scene with Dr. Reginald Brookes, a young physician who offers her financial help for her musical training, which Marion nobly refuses, preferring self-sufficiency. The narrative establishes Marion as a generous, brave girl vulnerable to exploitation.

In this issue

“Marion Marlowe's Skill: or, A Week as a Private Detective” by Grace Shirley · p.3

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Each page has its own page — the cartoon, who’s in it, and what the satire means.