Knowra Dime novel Dime novel A cheap American fiction booklet popular in the nineteenth century, typically featuring adventure, crime, or sensational plots. Its low price and mass circulation helped make popular fiction accessible to a broad public.
Erastus Beadle : An American publisher who co-founded the firm that made dime novels a major publishing phenomenon. His firm launched the series that gave the format its name.
Wood engraving : A relief-printing technique in which images are cut into the end grain of wood. Wood-engraved covers made striking illustrations practical for inexpensive publications.
Western fiction : Fiction set primarily in the American West, often depicting frontier life, conflict, and settlement. Western adventures became one of the dime novel’s most recognizable genres.
Mass market paperback : A compact, inexpensive paperback edition designed for broad retail distribution. Later mass-market books continued the dime novel’s emphasis on cheap, portable fiction.
Chapbook : A small, inexpensive booklet, historically sold as popular literature, ballads, or practical information. Chapbooks share the cheap-booklet form but predate the American dime-novel market.
Beadle and Adams : A New York publishing firm best known for issuing inexpensive popular fiction and other mass-market publications. Its 1860 novel series established the recognizable dime-novel model.
Stereotyping : A printing process that makes a durable metal plate from a mold of composed type or another printing surface. Reusable plates helped publishers print popular titles in large quantities.
Detective fiction : Fiction centered on the investigation and solution of a crime by a detective. Dime novels helped popularize crime-solving heroes for a mass audience.
Pulps : Inexpensive popular fiction magazines printed on coarse wood-pulp paper. Pulp publishing inherited the dime novel’s audiences, genres, and appetite for serial heroes.
Penny press : A nineteenth-century newspaper business model built around low prices and mass circulation. It pursued a similar mass audience through daily news rather than adventure booklets.
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