I’ve posted in the past about dime novels, that existed from 1860 to around 1920, which were the forerunners of the pulps. A few dime-novel series became pulp magazines. There were many forms for dime novels, but most use the term for the series of inexpensive paperbound five- and 10-cent weeklies, “thick book” reprints, and the like. Many were numbered series, focusing on adventure tales, westerns, detective, and the like.
There have been a few reprints of these works, and I recently obtained a couple of reprints via Kickstarter that were put out by Darren Németh‘s Giant Squid Audio Lab Co. in its Page-Turner Series. The company sells audio equipment, and the owner dabbles in reprinting books as well.
Number 1 in the Page-Turner Series is The Great Express Robbery by Grace Miller White. This is a novelization of what was at the time a popular play by A.H. Woods. It was published in 1907, and it appears that Woods had a whole series of plays that traveled the country. I wonder if this or any of the others were turned into movies?
The story seems typical of the melodramas of the period. It’s about two sisters, one more loved by their rich father, and the other who marries a man who turns out poorly. Both fall into the clutches of bandits and criminals, leading up to a train robbery, violence, and death.
Number 2 in the Page-Turner Series is Four Dime Novels From the Old Sleuth. The Old Sleuth was the first dime-novel detective. He first appeared in 1872, and was the first to use the word “sleuth” to denote a detective, and also started the trend of using “old” in the names of dime-novel detectives like Old Cap Collier, Old Broadbrim, Old King Brady, Old Lightning, Old Ferret, and even Old Sim Carter, the father of Nick Carter.
Old Sleuth had a dime-novel series devoted to his stories, plus he had a series named Old Sleuth’s Own, which ran stories of other detectives from 1894 to 1899, later reprinted between 1900 and 1915. The series ran over 100 issues.
This volume had four stories from the Old Sleuth’s Own series, thus none of the stories star the Old Sleuth himself. They are presented as being written by the Old Sleuth. These had been published in the 1890s, and later reprinted by another publisher in the early 1900s. We get:
- #42: Amzi, The Detective; or, Morning, Noon, and Night in New York. (1896)
- #105: Seth Bond; or, A Lost Treasure Mystery (1898)
- #117: A Struggle to Win; or A Gypsy Boy’s Secret (1898)
- #126: A Detective’s Daughter, An Extraordinary Narrative (1898)
While these are various detective tales, I found the language a bit archaic. Plus I found them based on dialogue, and clunky dialogue at that.
The first tale is about Amzi Sheldon, a new New York policeman, who becomes a detective. The next is about a private detective, who is engaged to figure out the mystery behind a treasure found in an old house. The third is about the adventures of a boy, and the mysteries tied to him. The fourth is the adventures of a detective’s daughter.
Each of the four issues reprinted also includes the 20 or so pages of ads that ran in the back of the dime novels, not just lists of the whole series, but for other books of the time. You have to wonder if these others are available somewhere.
If you want to obtain copies, your choices are limited. Only a few extra copies were created. Extra copies of the Great Express Robbery are available on Amazon, while extra copies of Four Dime Novels are available on eBay. Who knows if or when a third volume will be done? A Kickstarter campaign to reprint the novelization of a Lon Chaney movie was just concluded.
