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Dime Novels: Stories
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Dime novels were first printed in the 1860s when American cities filled up with poor immigrants from Europe. From 1880 to 1916, dime novels set the tone for the times - hard work, honesty, and violence only when necessary. They set up the standard situations and characters used in early radio programs, movies and novels - from mystery and spy stories to Westerns, including Buffalo Bill.
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It is generally agreed that the term originated with the first book in Beadle & Adams Beadle’s Dime Novels series, Maleaska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, by Ann S. Stephens, dated June 9, 1860. The novel was an essential reprint of Stephens's earlier serial that appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March, and April of 1839. The dime novels varied in size, even within this first Beadle series, but were roughly 6.5 by 4.25 inches (16.5x10.8cm), with 100 pages. The first 28 were published without a cover illustration, in a salmon colored paper wrapper, but a woodblock print was added with issue 29, and reprints of the first 28 had an illustration added to the cover. Of course, the books were priced 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 that was used right up to the very end in the 1920s.
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Though dime novels varied to some extent in format, the stories were nearly all alike. They were thrilling tales of adventure, history, love, war, and romance, which were set in America during the Revolution, Civil War, or frontier period. Melodramatic in style, they were replete with words of stirring action, inflated description, and padded prose. Sales of the affordable dime novel were phenomenal. During banner years, various firms were publishing as many as 101 different series concurrently, and some series ran to more than a thousand titles. Novels with initial printings of 60, 000-70, 000 often went through ten or twelve editions in a single year.
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Stanford's Dime Novel and Story Paper Collection contains approximately 8,000 volumes. Sample titles include Frank Leslie's Boys of America, Good News, Beadles New York Dime Library, and Old Sleuth Weekly. Stanford University was one of the first to give dime novels a strong presence on the web and their site is still one of the best ones on the subject.
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Dime novels weren't written as high-quality literature--in fact the majority of the stories seem a little cheesy and melodramatic when read today. Yet, when they appeared on the scene in the early 1860s, they became an instant success. And despite the badly written prose, dime novels remained on the American popular literature list for more than fifty years.
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Covering a wide variety of subjects, dime novels promoted traditional American values of patriotism, rugged individualism, and moral behavior. Many of the early dime novel stories focused on historical events such as the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and conflicts with Native Americans. Others were set in gold mining camps or towns within the expanding western frontier, and featured gunfighters, villains, and damsels in distress. Reflecting the urbanization of cities, the industrial revolution, and increased transportation modes, subsequent dime novel subjects included circuses, railroad workers, firefighters, sports, science fiction, fantasy, sea or polar explorations, and mysteries with detectives from every walk of life. Moving beyond the borders of America, a few detail adventures in distant places.
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