dime novels

dime novels swift-moving, thrilling novels, mainly about the American Revolution, the frontier period, and the Civil War. The books were first sold in 1860 for 10 cents by the firm of Beadle and Adams. The earliest was Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860), by Anne Stephens, which is said to have sold 300,000 copies in the first year; similar novels sold by the thousands throughout the country and especially in the Civil War camps. Such men as Bruin Adams, Col. Mayne Reid, Col. Prentiss Ingraham, W. F. Cody, and Ned Buntline wrote of their own adventures. Among the most famous series were those about Deadwood Dick, by Edward L. Wheeler, and those about Nick Carter . After 1880, imitators entered the field with lurid stories that dealt in blood and thunder. Their popularity lasted until the 1890s, when they began to be replaced by pulp magazines, comic strips, and series of stories such as those about the Rover Boys and Frank Merriwell.

Bibliography: See E. Pearson, Dime Novels (1929); A. Johannsen, The House of Beadle and Adams and its Dime and Nickel Novels (3 vol., 1962).

Dime Novel, popular name for cheap thrilling tales of history, romance, warfare, or any violent action, many of which were set in America during the Revolution, Civil War, or frontier period. They attained an immense popularity in the U.S. from the publication of Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter in 1860 by Ann Sophia Stephens to about 1895, at which time they began to be superseded by pulp magazines and such series as those concerning Frank Merriwell, the Rover Boys, and Tom Swift. Many of the novels, whose major publisher was Beadle and Adams of New York, cost only five cents. Although the development of plot closely followed conventional moral patterns, stern critics mistakenly called dime novels immoral. They probably fostered a nationalistic attitude, emphasizing as they did the democratic vigor and individualism of the American people. Among the most famous authors were E.Z.C. Judson, Prentiss Ingraham, Edward L. Wheeler, who created “Deadwood Dick,” and J.R. Coryell, who created “Nick Carter.”