What To Read? A Dime Novel or A Story Paper?

So, here is a basic summary of the introduction. Stanford's Dime Novel and the Story Paper genres were popular from the mid to the end of the 19th century in America and England. In England though, the novels were referred as "Penny Dreadfuls". They targeted the young working class. They were sold in newsstands and dry good stores. The dime novels covered stories of the Wild West adventures with cover illustrations. Other covered tales of urban outlaws, detective stories working-girl narratives of virtue defended and costume romances. The wild west adventure stories had gory cover illustration. I viewed the wild west stories and indeed, they were too gory for me!

The story papers were distributed as a weekly eight page tabloid, who were similar to the dime novels. Unlike the dime novels, the story papers material and themes were appropriated for the entire family. They had a huge circulations those days. In a major contrast to the Dime Novel illustration, the story papers combined the text with the illustrations as wood engraving.

The Stanford Dime Novel and Story Paper Collection has over 8,000 individual items! If you choose to use the "browse images" method via the home page, you'll come across the results of 2369 images! Holy cow! I also recommend that you check out the "Time Line" section. It's pretty cool.

Dime Novels & Penny Dreadfuls
http://library.stanford.edu/depts/dp/pennies/home.html