Here, in fact, was the dauntless American hero in action, the lone frontiersman opening
up an untamed continent, fighting savage odds with rifle, dagger and bare fist and
rescuing a beauteous bride along the way. The very stuff at the heart of James Fenimore
Cooper’s work, the spirit of whose Hawkeye bestrides the thousands of popular
paperbacks that now followed in his trail.
Not that every dime novel hero was a wilderness scout. Number two of Beadle’s series
was entitled The Privateer’s Cruise and starred the heroically named Harry Cavendish
(‘God of my fathers! Every soul will be lost!’), and his staunch chum O’Hara, the
Irishman who acted as comic relief with his brogue.
Editor for Beadle’s books was Orville J.Victor, whose wife Martha Victoria wrote the
fourth novel in the series. Alice Wilde, the Raftsman’s Daughter introduced further comic
relief in the shape of rustic Ben Perkins (‘That ar log bobs round like the old sea-
sarpint!’). Editor Victor was responsible for the first great publicity campaign for a dime
novel, posting the countryside with advertisements demanding ‘Who is Seth Jones?’. He
turned out to be a white hunter in fringed buckskin, hero of Seth Jones or the Captives of
the Frontier, who introduced himself thus: ‘How de do? How de do? Ain’t frightened, I
hope? It’s nobody but me, Seth Jones, from New Hampshire!’. A 19-year-old
schoolmaster from Ohio, Edward Ellis, was paid $75 for the book. The first edition sold
60,000 copies and it finally reached half a million sales, being translated into eleven
languages. Ellis never went back to school, writing 150 volumes of juvenile stories, plus
many biographies and histories before his death in 1916.
Beadle himself died in 1894. He had moved from Buffalo to New York in 1858 and
formed a partnership with Robert Adams, publishing joke books and almanacs as well
as a string of cheap magazines, such as Girls of Today and The Young New Yorker. The
success of their dime novel library encouraged further publications, and out came
‘Beadle’s Boy’s Library of Sport, Story and Adventure’ (Snow Shoe Tom or New York Boys
in the Wilderness), ‘Beadle’s Pocket Library’ (Roaring Ralph Rocked the Reckless Ranger)
and the even cheaper—hence more popular with working-class youngsters—‘Beadle’s
Half Dime Library’. This series would run to over a thousand titles.
Naturally other American publishers jumped on the dime novel bandwagon. Ten Cent
Novelettes (1863) came from Boston with The Brave’s Secret; Ten Cent Romance (1867)
came from New York with The Mountain Trapper. The most successful publisher may
have been George P.Munro, whose Ten Cent Novels (1867) began with The Patriot
Highwayman, and who died thirty years later a multimillionaire.
The bloodthirsty descriptions that bespattered dime novels soon began to bother the
‘better classes’, notably when in 1874 Jesse Pomeroy, a sadistic murderer, claimed to be
prompted by ‘literature of the dime novel type’. Beadle and his editors immediately
formulated a set of writer’s rules which were sent to all their authors:
We prohibit all things offensive to good taste, in expression or incident, subjects or
characters that carry an immoral taint, the repetition of any occurrence which,
though true, is better untold, and what cannot be read with satisfaction by every
high-minded person, old and young alike.256 POPULAR LITERATURE: COMICS, DIME NOVELS, PULPS AND PENNY DREADFULS