Can Anybody Spare a Dime?
When I’m not obsessing about Lincoln for 21st-Century Abe I do have some time for other projects at the Rosenbach Museum & Library and recently I’ve been spending some time doing research in preparation for an exhibit on dime novels, which is slated to go up next summer (2010). If you’re not familiar with them, dime novels were inexpensive paperback novels popular in the late 19th-century; their name comes from the fact that they initially sold for a dime, although later many “half-dime” publications emerged.
They are often thought of today as being lurid or trashy, being solely about cowboys and Indians, and being solely the province of boys, but I’m realizing now that isn’t the case. Many novels, especially the earlier ones published closer to 1860, were written by “real authors” and were intended to appeal to a broad audience, not a child audience. Lincoln himself reportedly praised Metta Victor’s novel about slave life entitled Maum Guinea and Her Plantation Children which was strongly in the abolitionist vein and included an extended account of Nat Turner’s rebellion.
One of the things that intrigues me about these books as I read through them is that on one hand they seem “cheap”–they are usually very derivative (one book I just read aped Robinson Crusoe to the extent of including a naked footprint scene) , have little character development, care more about filling the requisite pages than in developing a coherent plot, and utilize ridiculous dialects– but on the other hand they can expect some sophisticated knowledge from their readers–dropping in Latin phrases, having characters speak in French (without translation), or making references to the Comte de Buffon, an 18th-century naturalist.
Any other dime novel fans out there?
