dime novels
Old sensational paperbacks
Dime novels were cheap, sensational paperback fiction sold in America from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century—literally priced at ten cents.
They featured adventure, romance, westerns, and detective stories aimed at working-class readers: He grew up on dime novels about frontier outlaws.
The term now dismissively describes any pulpy, formulaic fiction: The plot reads like a dime novel.
- yellowbackCheap sensational novel
- sensationalArousing intense excitement
- penny dreadfulsCheap Victorian horror serials
- ten centCosting a dime
- detective storiesCrime-solving fiction genre
Nick Carter · chapbooks · Wild West · mystery · escapism · adventure tales · serialized fiction · war stories · romance · frontier justice · pulp fiction · blood and thunder · short stories · Buffalo Bill · ghost stories · serialized · cowboy tales · bodice-ripper
- literaturebooks, book, fiction, poetry, stories
- Westernscowboys, western, outlaws, sheriffs, saloons
- entertainment historyvaudeville, silent films, talkies, Hollywood, movie palaces
- old mediabooks, radio, newspaper, newspapers, television
- popular fictionbestsellers, genre fiction, page-turners, pulp fiction, mysteries
- early sci-fiJules Verne, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, The Time Machine
dime novelsliterary classics
Celebrated enduring works
canonical works · belles-lettres · literary fiction · masterpieces · modernist novels
dime novelslimited editions
Intentionally scarce productions
collector's editions · deluxe editions · first editions · illuminated manuscripts
novel, dime, novelty, novels, dimes, dime novel, novella, novelties, novellas