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The Elizabeth Nesbitt Room
Dime Novel Collection
The "dime novel" was a form of popular literature published in the U.S. from the mid to late 19th century through the early part of the 20th century. Costing as little at 10 cents in the beginning of their production, these paperbacks were affordable to people in the working classes. These fictionalized accounts purported to be “true stories” of people and from early America, the Wild West, and the Civil War. In actuality, they were sensational, melodramatic tales that included many adventure tales and detective stories.
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.
The Elizabeth Nesbitt Room contains a small representative smapling of about 30 dime novels, some of them translations into foreign languages. Because of the poor quality paper used in their production, they are extrememly brittle.
