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Dime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different (but related) forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction, including "true" dime novels, story papers, five- and ten-cent weekly libraries, "thick book" reprints, and sometimes even early pulp magazines.〔The English equivalents were generally called penny dreadfuls or shilling shockers. American firms also issued foreign editions of many of their works, especially as series characters came into vogue.〕 The term was being used as a title as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp ''Western Dime Novels''. Dime novels are, at least in spirit, the antecedent of today's mass market paperbacks, comic books, and even television shows and movies based on the dime novel genres. In the modern age, "dime novel" has become a term to describe any quickly written, lurid potboiler and as such is generally used as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized yet superficial piece of written work. == History == In 1860, publishers Erastus and Irwin Beadle released a new series of cheap paperbacks, entitled Beadle's Dime Novels. The name became the general term for similar paperbacks produced by different publishers throughout the early twentieth century. The first book in Irwin and Beadle's series was ''Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter'', by Ann S. Stephens, dated June 9, 1860.〔Lyons, p. 156.〕 The novel was essentially a reprint of Stephens' earlier serial that appeared in the ''Ladies' Companion'' magazine in February, March and April 1839. It sold more than 65,000 copies within the first few months of its publication as a dime novel.〔Lyons, pp. 156–157.〕 The dime novels varied in size, even within this first Beadle series, but were roughly , with 100 pages. The first 28 were published without a cover illustration, in a salmon colored paper wrapper. A woodblock print was added with issue 29, and reprints of the first 28 had an illustration added to the cover. Of course, the books were priced at ten cents. This series ran for 321 issues, and established almost all the conventions of the genre, from the lurid and outlandish story to the melodramatic double titling that was used right up to the very end in the 1920s. Most of the stories were frontier tales reprinted from the vast backlog of serials in the story papers and other sources,〔Lax copyright enforcement allowed the publication of many foreign literary works without payment of royalties.〕 as well as many originals. As the popularity of dime novels increased, original stories came to be the norm. The books were themselves reprinted many times, sometimes with different covers, and the stories were often further reprinted in different series, and by different publishers.〔The proliferation of reprints has been the source of much confusion over the years, as regards "first prints". As a general rule, the date of the printing can be determined from the list of other titles in the series found on the back cover. Dime novels were issued in twos or sometimes fours, so a true first printing will not list more than three numbers beyond the number on the cover. However, a later printing might list a hundred titles beyond the cover number. The books are so rare these days that the lateness of the printing does not bear much weight in pricing.〕 ''Beadle's Dime Novels'' were immediately popular among young, working-class audiences, owing to an increased literacy rate around the time of the American Civil War. By the war's end, there were numerous competitors like George Munro and Robert DeWitt crowding the field, distinguishing their product only by title and the color choice of the paper wrappers. Even Beadle & Adams had their own alternate "brands", such as the Frank Starr line. As a whole, the quality of the fiction was derided by higher brow critics and the term 'dime novel' quickly came to represent any form of cheap, sensational fiction, rather than the specific format. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「dime novel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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