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Dime novel

The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular
fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term dime novel has
been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, referring to story
papers, five- and ten-cent weeklies, "thick book" reprints, and sometimes early pulp
magazines.[notes 1] The term was used as a title as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp
magazine Western Dime Novels. In the modern age, the term dime novel has been used
to refer to quickly written, lurid potboilers, usually as a pejorative to describe a
sensationalized but superficial literary work.

Contents
History
Prices
Development
Changing formats
Cover of Seth Jones; or, The
Demise
Captives of the Frontierby
Collections Edward S. Ellis (1860)
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links

History
In 1860, the publishers Erastus and Irwin Beadle released a new series of cheap paperbacks, Beadle's Dime Novels.[1] Dime novel
became a general term for similar paperbacks produced by various publishers in the early twentieth century. The first book in the
Beadle series was Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, by Ann S. Stephens, dated June 9, 1860.[2] The novel was
essentially a reprint of Stephens's earlier serial, which had appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March and
April 1839. It sold more than 65,000 copies in the first few months after its publication as a dime novel.[3] Dime novels varied in
size, even in the first Beadle series, but were mostly about 6.5 by 4.25 inches (16.5 by 10.8 cm), with 100 pages. The first 28 were
published without a cover illustration, in a salmon-colored paper wrapper. A woodblock print was added in issue 29, and the first 28
were reprinted with illustrated covers. The books were priced, of course, at ten cents.

This series ran for 321 issues and established almost all the conventions of the genre, from the lurid and outlandish story to the
melodramatic double titling used throughout the series, which ended in the 1920s. Most of the stories were frontier tales reprinted
[notes 2] but many were original stories.
from the numerous serials in the story papers and other sources,

As the popularity of dime novels increased, original stories came to be the norm. The books were reprinted many times, sometimes
with different covers, and the stories were often further reprinted in different series and by different publishers.[notes 3]

The literacy rate increased around the time of the American Civil War, and Beadle's Dime Novels were immediately popular among
young, working-class readers. By the end of the war, numerous competitors, such as George Munro and Robert DeWitt, were
crowding the field, distinguishing their product only by title and the color of the paper wrappers. Beadle & Adams had their own
alternate "brands", such as the Frank Starr line. As a whole, the quality of the fiction
was derided by highbrow critics, and the term dime novel came to refer to any form
of cheap, sensational fiction, rather than the specific format.

Nonetheless, the pocket-sized sea, Western, railway, circus, gold-digger, and other
adventures were an instant success. Author Armin Jaemmrich observes that Alexis
de Tocqueville's theses in Democracy in America (1835) says that in democratic and
socially permeable societies, like that of the U.S., the lower classes were not
"naturally indifferent to science, literature, and the arts: only it must be
acknowledged that they cultivate them after their own fashion, and bring to the task
their own peculiar qualifications and deficiencies." He found that in aristocratic
societies education and interest in literature were confined to a small upper class,
and that the literary class would arrive at a "sort of aristocratic jargon, ... hardly less
remote from pure language than was the coarse dialect of the people."[4] According
to Tocqueville, due to the heterogeneity of its population, the situation in the U.S.
was different, and people were asking for reading matter. Since, in his view,
practically every American was busy earning a living with no time for obtaining a
higher education let alone for timeconsuming distractions, they preferred books Cover of Malaeska, the Indian Wife
which "may be easily procured, quickly read, and which require no learned of the White Hunter (1860)
researches to be understood ... they require rapid emotions, startling passages ....
Small productions will be more common than bulky books ... The object of authors
will be to astonish rather than to please, and to stir the passions more than to charm the taste." Written twenty-five years prior to the
emergence of the dimes, his words read like an exact anticipation of their main characteristics.[5]

Prices
Adding to the general confusion as to what is or is not a dime novel, many of the series, though similar in design and subject, cost ten
to fifteen cents. Beadle & Adams complicated the matter by issuing some titles in the same salmon-colored covers at different prices.
Also, there were a number of ten-cent, paper-covered books of the period that featured medieval romance stories and melodramatic
tales. This makes it hard to define what falls in the category of the dime novel, with classification depending on format, price, or style
of material. Examples of dime novel series that illustrate the diversity of the form include Bunce's Ten Cent Novels, Brady's Mercury
Stories, Beadle's Dime Novels, Irwin P. Beadle's Ten Cent Stories, Munro's Ten Cent Novels, Dawley's Ten Penny Novels, Fireside
Series, Chaney's Union Novels, DeWitt's Ten Cent Romances, Champion Novels, Frank Starr's American Novels, Ten Cent
Novelettes, Richmond's Sensation Novels, and Ten Cent Irish Novels.

In 1874, Beadle & Adams added the novelty of color to the covers when their New Dime Novels series replaced the flagship title. The
New Dime Novels were issued with a dual numbering system on the cover, one continuing the numbering from the first series and the
second and more prominent one indicating the number in the current series; for example, the first issue was numbered 1 (322). The
stories were mostly reprints from the first series. Like its predecessor
, Beadle's New Dime Novels ran for 321 issues, until 1885.

Development
Much of the content of dime novels came from story papers, which were weekly, eight-page newspaper-like publications, varying in
size from tabloid to full-size newspaper format and usually costing five or six cents. They started in the mid-1850s and were
immensely popular, some titles being issued for over fifty years on a weekly schedule. They are perhaps best described as the
television of their day, containing a variety of serial stories and articles, with something aimed at each member of the family, and
often illustrated profusely with woodcuts. Popular story papers included The Saturday Journal, Young Men of America, Golden
Weekly, Golden Hours, Good News, and Happy Days.[notes 4]
Most of the stories in dime novels stood alone, but in the late 1880s series characters began
to appear and quickly grew in popularity. The original Frank Reade stories first appeared in
Boys of New York. The Old Sleuth, appearing in The Fireside Companion story paper
beginning in 1872, was the first dime-novel detective and began the trend away from the
western and frontier stories that dominated the story papers and dime novels up to that time.
He was the first character to use the word sleuth to denote a detective, the word's original
definition being that of a bloodhound trained to track. He is also responsible for the
popularity of the use of the word old in the names of competing dime novel detectives, such
as Old Cap Collier, Old Broadbrim, Old King Brady, Old Lightning, and Old Ferret, among
many others. Nick Carter first appeared in 1886 in the New York Weekly. Frank Reade, the
[notes 5]
Old Sleuth and Nick Carter had their own ten-cent weekly titles within a few years.

Changing formats
In 1873, the house of Beadle & Adams introduced a new ten-cent format, 9 by 13.25 inches The New Dime Novel Series
(229 mm × 337 mm), with only 32 pages and a black-and-white illustration on the cover, introduced color covers but
under the title New and Old Friends. It was not a success, but the format was so much reprinted stories from the
cheaper to produce that they tried again in 1877 withThe Fireside Library and Frank Starr's original series
New York Library. The first reprinted English love stories, the second contained hardier
material, but both titles caught on.
Publishers were no less eager to
follow a new trend then than now.
Soon the newsstands were flooded by
ten-cent weekly "libraries". These
publications also varied in size, from
as small as 7 x 10 inches (The Boy's
Star Library is an example) to 8.5 x
12 (New York Detective Library).
The Old Cap Collier Library was
issued in both sizes and also in
booklet form. Each issue tended to
feature a single story, unlike the story
papers, and many of them were
devoted to a single character.
Frank Tousey's major black-and- Frontier stories, evolving into
white library, 1884 westerns, were still popular, but the Old Sleuth Library, 1888
new vogue tended to urban crime
stories. One of the most successful
titles, Frank Tousey's New York Detective Library eventually came to alternate stories of the James Gang with stories of Old King
Brady, detective, and (in a rare occurrence in the dime novel) several stories which featured both, with Old King Brady doggedly on
the trail of the vicious gang.[notes 6]

The competition was fierce, and publishers were always looking for an edge. Once again, color came into play when Frank Tousey
introduced a weekly with brightly colored covers in 1896. Street & Smith countered by issuing a weekly in a smaller format with
muted colors. Such titles as New Nick Carter Weekly (continuing the original black-and-white Nick Carter Library), Tip-Top Weekly
(introducing Frank Merriwell) and others were 7 x 10 inches with thirty-two pages of text, but the 8.5 x 11 Tousey format carried the
day, and Street & Smith soon followed suit. The price was also dropped to five cents, making the magazines more accessible to
children. This would be the last major permutation of the product before it evolved into pulp magazines. Ironically, for many years it
has been the nickel weeklies that most people refer to when using the termdime novel.
The nickel weeklies were popular, and their numbers grew quickly. Frank Tousey
and Street & Smith dominated the field. Tousey had his "big six": Work and Win
(featuring Fred Fearnot, a serious rival to the soon-to-be-popular Frank Merriwell),
Secret Service, Pluck and Luck, Wild West Weekly, Fame and Fortune Weekly, and
The Liberty Boys of '76, each of which issued over a thousand copies
weekly.[notes 7] Street & Smith had New Nick Carter Weekly, Tip Top Weekly,
Buffalo Bill Stories, Jesse James Stories, Brave & Bold Weekly and many others.
The Tousey stories were generally the more lurid and sensational of the two.

Perhaps the most confusing of the various formats lumped together under the term
dime novel are the so-called "thick-book" series, most of which were published by
Street & Smith, J. S. Ogilvie and Arthur Westbrook. These books were published in
series, contained roughly 150 to 200 pages, and were 4.75 by 7 inches (121 mm
× 178 mm), often with color covers on a higher-grade stock. They reprinted multiple
stories from the five- and ten-cent weeklies, often slightly rewritten to tie them
together.
One of the most popular color-
All dime-novel publishers were covered nickel weeklies,Secret
canny about reusing and Service, no. 225, May 15, 1903
refashioning material, but Street &
Smith excelled at it. They
developed the practice of publishing four consecutive, related tales of, for example,
Nick Carter, in the weekly magazine, then combining the four stories into one
edition of the related thick-book series, in this instance, the New Magnet
Library.[notes 8] The Frank Merriwell stories appeared in theMedal, New Medal and
Merriwell libraries, Buffalo Bill in the Buffalo Bill Library and Far West Library,
and so on. The thick books were still in print as late as the 1930s but carry the
copyright date of the original story, often as early as the late nineteenth century,
leading some dealers and new collectors today to erroneously assume they have
original dime novels when the books are only distantly related.

Demise
An example of a "thick book" series,
American Detective Series, no. 21, In 1896, Frank Munsey had converted his juvenile magazine The Argosy into a
Arthur Westbrook Co. fiction magazine for adults, the first of the pulp magazines. By the turn of the
century, new high-speed printing techniques combined with cheaper pulp paper
allowed him to drop the price from twenty-five cents to ten cents, and sales of the
magazine took off.[6] In 1910 Street and Smith converted two of their nickel weeklies, New Tip Top Weekly and Top Notch Magazine,
into pulps; in 1915, Nick Carter Stories, itself a replacement for the New Nick Carter Weekly, became Detective Story Magazine, and
in 1919, New Buffalo Bill Weekly became Western Story Magazine. Harry Wolff, the successor in interest to the Frank Tousey titles,
continued to reprint many of them into the mid-1920s, most notably Secret Service, Pluck and Luck, Fame and Fortune and Wild
West Weekly. These two series were purchased by Street & Smith in 1926 and converted into pulp magazines the following year,
effectively ending the era of the dime novel.

Collections
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, collecting dime novels became popular, and prices soared. Even at that time the cheap publications
were crumbling into dust and becoming hard to find. Two collectors, Charles Bragin and Ralph Cummings, issued a number of
[notes 9]
reprints of hard-to-find titles from some of the weekly libraries.

[7]
The Library of Congress through copyright deposit has accumulated a collection of nearly 40,000 titles.
The University of Minnesota's Hess Collection has a collection of over
65,000 dime novels, among the largest in North America.
Northern Illinois University's Rare Books and Special Collectionsholds
over 50,000 dime novels in its Johannsen and LeBlanc Collections.
More than 4,000 volumes from these collections have been digitized and
made freely available online throughNickels and Dimes.
Villanova University's Dime Novel and Popular Literature Collection was
established in 2012 when the collection of Charles Moore Magee was
rediscovered in storage. This formed the seed around which a larger
collection was grown through acquisitions and donations from scholars.
Much of the collection has been digitized and is available online through
Villanova University's Digital Library.
Stanford University has a collection of over 8,000 individual dime novels
and a website devoted to the subject.
The University of South Florida–Tampa Special Collections Department
has a collection of nearly 9,000 dime novels, including Frank ousey's
T
Frank Reade Library and the Frank Reade Weekly Magazine.
The Edward G. Levy Dime Novel Collection is housed at theFales
Library at New York University. A complete finding aid to the collection is
available online.
The Fales Library at New York University also houses the Ralph Adimari Cover of The Liberty Boys Running
Papers and the William J. Benners Papers. Adimari was a historian who
the Blockade, by Harry Moore, in The
studied dime novels. His papers include research notes, clippings, and
ephemera related to dime novels. Benners was a writer and publisher of Liberty Boys of '76, April 7, 1922
dime novels. Fales Library guide to the Ralph Adimari Papers . Fales
Library guide to the William J. Benners Papers .
The University of Missouri, Columbia, houses a small collection of dime
novels in its Division of Special Collections, Archives and Rare Books
Brandeis University's Archives & Special Collections Department has a
collection of dime novels and juvenile literature dating from 1805 to
1979. A preliminary container listis now available online.
The Texas Collection at Baylor University has a collection of nearly 350
dime novels from 1861 to 1919.[8]
The Dolph Briscoe Center for American Historyat the University of
Texas at Austin houses a collection of 212 ofBeadle's dime novels.The
collection can be viewedhere.
The Athenaeum of Philadelphiaholds a small collection of dime novels
(11 boxes) that were collected by the Rev . Roland Sawyer and donated
by Roland D. Sawyer, Jr. It includes substantial runs ofBeadle's Dime
Library and Beadle's Half Dime Libraryand smaller numbers of
Deadwood Dick Libraryand other titles.
Syracuse University Librariesholds a collections of Street and Smith
novels and the records of thepublishers.

See also
Cover of The Boy Nihilist, by Allan
Melodrama Arnold, in Pluck and Luck, June 16,
Horror fiction 1909
Penny dreadful
Pulp magazines
Gothic novel
Eugene T. Sawyer

Notes
1. The English equivalents were generally calledpenny dreadfuls or shilling shockers. The German and French
equivalents were called "Groschenromane" and "livraisons à dix centimes", respectively. American firms also issued
foreign editions of many of their works, especially as series characters came into vogue.
2. Lax copyright enforcement allowed the publication of many foreign literary works without payment of royalties.
3. The proliferation of reprints has been a source of confusion about first printings. As a general rule, the date of the
printing can be determined from the other titles in the series listed on the back cover
. Dime novels were issued in
twos or sometimes fours, so a first printing does not list more than three numbers beyond the number on the cover ,
whereas a later printing may list a hundred titles beyond the cover number . The books are so rare now that the
lateness of the printing does not much affect their price.
4. There were English story papers as well, containing much the same sort of content. The stories were similarly
reprinted in various other formats.
5. Nick Carter has proved to be one of the most durable, if bland, fictional characters of all time. In one incarnation or
another, he has been active for over 100 years, most recently as Nick Carter, Killmaster, in a long-running paperback
series.
6. Nick Carter was also a character in stories featuring other detectives, such as Old Broadbrim, much as superheroes
crossover in today's comic books.
7. Several shorter runs are among the most collectible today:Frank Reade Weekly (the color-cover followup to the
Frank Reade Library) and The James Boys.
8. In addition, Street & Smith bought the rights to other detective stories and had them strung together and rewritten
into Nick Carter stories, allowing theNew Magnet Library to run for over 1000 issues.
9. These reprints turn up frequently and are often confused with originals, as the notice of their reprint status is not
prominent.

References
1. Lyons (2011), p. 156.
2. Lyons (2011), p. 156.
3. Lyons (2011), pp. 156–157.
4. Jaemmrich (2016), Chapter XIII.
5. Jaemmrich (2016)
6. Lyons (2011), p. 156.
7. "Dime Novel Collection"(https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/061.html). The Library of Congress: Special
Collections. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
8. "Dime Novels: The Rise of the American Hero"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLSnAIjGKEs). YouTube.
Retrieved 8 May 2018.

Bibliography
Lyons, Martyn (2011). Books: A Living History. California: J. Paul Getty Museum.ISBN 9781606060834.

Jaemmrich, Armin (2016).The American Noir: A Rehabilitation. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
ISBN 9781523664405.

Cox, J. Randolph (2000).The Dime Novel Companion: A Source Book. Greenwood Publishing Group.
ISBN 9780313256745.

Denning, Michael (1998).Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-class Culture in America
. Verso.
ISBN 9781859842508.

Johannsen, Albert (1950).The House of Beadle and Adams and its Nickel and Dime Novels
. University of Oklahoma
Press.

LeBlanc, Edward, The Dime Novel Round-Up, multiple issues.

Pearson, Edmund Lester (1929).Dime Novels: or, Following an Old Trail in Popular Literature. Little, Brown, and
Company.

External links
The Edward T. LeBlanc Memorial Dime Novel Bibliography, a comprehensive online database with bibliographic
information about dime novels
Kennedy, Robert C. (2001). " "Our Youth and Youth's Literature from a Chinese Point of View". HarpWeek via The
New York Times. Archived from the original on March 14, 2011. Retrieved November 9, 2015.

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