Dime Novel Diversions

 

 

Hi Guys!

I'm filling in for Billy today with some ten-cent fun from 150 years ago!  I'm talking about dime novels, the cheap and nasty ancestors of all the cool literature that we know today:  pulp magazines, paperbacks, and even comic books!   

Dime novels became really popular right around the end of the Civil War, a time when more and more average Americans were finding themselves with a little extra spare coin and a little extra spare time for pleasure reading.  It was a time when people were moving around a lot, too, and if you had to spend the day on a train or a steamer getting from "A" to "B," a dime novel could make those hours go by a lot quicker!  

You see, dime novels were cheap, so you could buy a bunch of 'em at one time.  They were short, too.  Unlike a bulky chapter book that you had to lug around and might not be able to finish, most dime novels could be read from beginning to end in one sitting!  Best of all, they were small and flexible, so you could jam them in your pocket and read 'em wherever! 

Now I haven't read every dime novel they ever printed; heck, there's thousands of titles out there!  But I've seen enough of them to know they they have a few things in common.  None of these books are literary masterpieces.  They skip the art and get right to the meat!  From page one they're packed with adventure and derring-do, often on the wild frontier.  Most dime novels that I have run across deal with clashes between white frontiersmen, who are generally the heroes; and Native Americans, who are almost always the bad guys.  

The basic plots can vary I guess, but in one way or another, they are all looking at the granddaddy of such stories, namely James Fenimore Cooper, the author who brought us The Last of the Mohicans way back in the 1820s.  Other sources of inspiration might include William Gilmore Simms, "the Cooper of the South;" and Robert Montgomery Bird, who was notorious for his horrific tale of The Jibbenainosay, about an insane giant Quaker who stalks the woods and kills Indians!

 

 

 

You can bet that with this kind of content, the majority of readers was presumed to be boys and young men.  Like other stories aimed at this demographic, dime novels aimed to model courage and heroism.  But they were gritty, too!  There were plenty of rough characters and shocking scenes, at least by Victorian standards.  You had to expect that, especially after years of civil war!

Looks like girls were allowed, though!  I'm guessing that boys were still the primary target of stories like the ones above, but if I were a girl, I'd probably want to know what's going on here.  Sure, I'm looking at it through the lens of post-feminist America, but it's kind of cool to think that maybe girls could read these and get some tips on how to be strong and courageous too, or at least know what to look for in guys!  

Horror and mystery sometimes pop up in dime novel stories.  Here we have some costumed and masked riders, who I'm guessing might be based on the real-life doings of the Ku Klux Klan.  Whether that's the case or not, you can see how stuff like this could become a later influence on pulp- and comic-book villains. 

This is a reprint from around the year 1900.  Keeping the horror theme alive!  Note how the price has dropped to five cents -- Just about any red-blooded American kid could afford this stuff now!  

In case you wanted to live out the dime-novel world, you could also buy ten-cent "dialogues," which were like little scenes that you and your friends could perform together.  It was scripted playtime, but with more thrills!

Remember kids; murder is droll!  Violent insanity is humorous!  Actually, in fairness, these two books cost more than a dime, probably a whole twenty-five cents.  And they weren't really meant for kids, either.  But I think you can see the link to dime novels and melodrama here.  Taking it a step further, then, you could also say that these little books played their own small part in the later development of exploitation movies and grindhouse cinema! 

Basically, these mostly-forgotten trashy little books are at the root of what makes so much American popular entertainment great!  Sure, there's a time and a place for the classics, but if you ask me, that time and place needs to be severely limited!  Life is, after all, too short!

OK guys; catch you later!

*******

Afterwards we'll read some Shakespeare...

*******