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Dime Novels: Beadle's Dime Novels
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Irwin Beadle is credited with first conceiving the idea of printing entire novels, complete under one cover, to be sold for a dime, and to be issued in continuous series. In June 1860, Irwin P. Beadle & Co. released the first dime novel, Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter, by Ann S. Stephens. Within a few months, the novel had sold 65, 000 copies, virtually assuring the success of Beadle's dime novel venture. Over the years, competition in the industry developed, centered in New York City.
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[One] important subset of popular fiction at AAS is that containing the dime novels. These formulaic tales of adventure were issued in numbered series with titles such as Beadle's Sixpenny Tales, Boys' Books of Romance and Adventure, and The Sunnyside Library. They enjoyed wide readership from 1860 until well into the twentieth century. The Society's run of the Beadle series up to about 1875 is all but complete, and AAS holds strong representations of other, less popular imitations of that publisher's offerings. The standard guide to this colorful genre is Albert Johannsen's House of Beadle and Adams and its Dime and Nickel Novels (Norman, Okla., 1950). This three-volume work is annotated with AAS holdings, and the Society maintains checklists of the publications of other dime novel publishers.
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The first one appeared in 1860, published in New York by Beadle & Adams, under the series name Beadle's Dime Novels. Later, the term "dime novel" came to encompass an entire genre of cheap, paper-covered fiction, usually magazine-sized and issued in numbered sequence, that earned a reputation as "immoral " junk literature yet remained widely popular. While early dime novels were aimed adults, most publishers soon began offering selections for teenagers and younger readers.
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Irwin Beadle and his brother Erasmus, as Irwin Beadle and Co., published early dime novels, although the firm of Street & Smith soon came to dominate the field. From a distance, the dime novel might resemble the pulps of pre-World War II America in their formulaic appeal to a mass audience. But although they were never great art, their publishers felt that the dime novels -- often not so much novels as magazines that serialized work in weekly installments and carried the same name regardless of the author -- had a certain moral seriousness. Consider Erasmus Beadle's rules for prospective authors:
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Malaeska (1860), by Ann Stephens, is the first Dime Novel. It was number 1 in what would become a long series of Dime Novels published by the firm of Beadle and Adams under the "Beadle's Dime Novels" banner. If you really want to know more about Beadle & Adams, take a look at The House of Beadle and Adams and its dime and nickel novels; the story of a vanished literature by Albert Johannsen. It's three solid volumes of mind-numbing detail.
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Beadle's Dime Novels