Industrial popular culture emerged in mid-Nineteenth century as a literary phenomenon through a range of different serial formats (such as the roman-feuilleton in France, the “penny dreadfuls” in the United Kingdom, the Kolportageliteratur in Germany, etc.). Circulated throughout all Europe by means of an extensive process of translation, imitation and plagiarism, and subsequently largely reused as a primary source in films and comics fictions, popular literature constitutes an important native phenomenon for European cultural identity, a shared depository of themes, narrative topoi and figures – as well as, because of the crucial function of illustrations, iconography – that can instinctively be recognized by the audiences as their own collective memory.