A Preliminary Inventory of His Collection of Beadle and Adams Dime Novels at the Harry Ransom Center
Creator:
O'Brien, Frank P.
Title:
Frank P. O'Brien Collection of Beadle and Adams Dime Novels
Dates:
1860-1890
Extent:
857 titles in 863 volumes
Abstract:
Dime novels were a nineteenth-century
American publishing phenomenon: short potboiler fiction, in lurid covers, that typically
sold for ten cents. The Ransom Center's Dime Novels Collection contains 857 title
in 863
volumes put out by publisher Beadle and Adams, who originated the concept in 1860.
The
collection was formed by Frank P. O'Brien.
Dime novels were a nineteenth-century American publishing phenomenon: short potboiler
fiction, in lurid covers, that typically sold for ten cents. They are the antecedents
of
both modern paperbacks and comic books. The Ransom Center's Dime Novels Collection
contains
857 of these early titles put out by publisher Beadle and Adams, who originated the
concept
in 1860; the collection was formed by Frank P. O'Brien. The collection is arranged
by
publisher's series with the volumes arranged numerically within each series: I. Dime
Novels;
II. New Dime Novels; III. Pocket Novels; IV. Dime Libraries; V. Half Dime Libraries;
VI.
Pocket Library; VII. Lives of Great Americans; VIII. Twenty Cent Novels.
Two copies of the scarce first dime novel, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860) by Mrs. Ann
Stephens, begin the Center's holdings, which continue to the end of the century. The
individual volumes in the Dime Novels Collection have not been cataloged separately,
but a
list of authors and titles is included in this guide. Full details for each title
can be
found in Albert Johannsen's The House of Beadle & Adams
(1950), and in The New York Public Library's The Beadle collection of dime novels given to the New York Public Library by
Dr. Frank P. O'Brien. (1922). Call numbers were assigned using series and numbers from
Johannsen's lists and missing numbers indicate gaps in the Center's collection.
Related Material
Many dime novels put out by other publishers are located in other book collections
at the
Ransom Center; the Ellery Queen collection is especially rich. Although a number of
authors
wrote exclusively for the dime novel genre, others were also published in more traditional
formats. These latter, especially, are well-represented in the Ransom Center's general
run
of American nineteenth-century literature.
Ancillary Beadle and Adams items acquired with this book collection were transferred
to
other units of the Ransom Center: 11 photographs of Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody),
who
wrote for the series; a snuff box, a black wooden walking stick, and the mounted head
of a
buffalo shot by Cody; 12 engraved steel plates used for printing cover illustrations;
and
the large Beadle & Adams publisher's sign, which showed the way to their premises.
