Published throughout the period 1860-1910, dime novels are mass-produced, sensational narratives that initially appealed to working-class readers. By 1890, the primary audience for dime novels had shifted to adolescent boys.
While the first dime novel, so-called, did not appear until 1860, cheap stories had been in circulation since the 1830s. Initially appearing in “penny newspapers” like the New York Ledger, such narratives were soon being serialized in "story papers" like Beadle's Weekly, the Home Companion, and the Family Story Paper. Each issue of a story paper featured installments of several different narratives, which would range from stories of the frontier, to stories about soldiers and warfare, to historical romances. Such story papers generally targeted working-class audiences, in contrast to more genteel publications like Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly.
Story papers were quite popular, and in 1860, the first stand-alone dime novel, Mrs. Ann S. Stephens’ Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, was published in a four-by-six-inch, 100-page format. Stephens’ novel was the first issue of the first dime novel series, Beadle's Dime Novels, published by Beadle and Adams in New York. Soon, several publishers, mostly in New York and Philadelphia, began publishing dime novel series. Larger publishing firms like Street and Smith in New York published several dime novel series simultaneously.
In the late nineteenth century, dime novels were superseded by “half-dime” novels, which were published in series called “libraries.” In contrast to the dime novel’s four-by-six-inch format, half-dime libraries were published as eight-by-eleven-inch pamphlets and were generally thirty-two pages long. Most featured elaborate cover illustrations intended to attract buyers' attention. Starting in 1896, advances in print technology enabled color illustrations to appear on the covers of half-dime novels. A gallery of dime novel cover art is part of this exhibition. |