The Ladies of the Dime Novels

When one thinks of women writers of the 19th century, novelists such as Charlotte Bronte or George Eliot most often come to mind. There was, however, another group of women who made their living through storytelling, and while their work may not be of the caliber of a Bronte or an Eliot, it had no less impact on the readers of the day.

These women wrote dime novels, pocket-sized paperbacks of roughly 100 pages that sold on newsstands and were popular from about 1860 until the 1890s. The popularity of dime novels was perhaps best expressed by Charles M. Harvey, writing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1907: "Beadle's dime novels. . .made their appearance in 1860. Many Americans who were old enough to read at that time remember 1860 better from that circumstance than they do because it was the year of Lincoln's election and the secession of South Carolina."

One variety of dime novel, often published in series, enthralled an audience of boys and men with rags-to-riches stories as well as tales of war and the Wild West. There was another type of story, however, with a more decidedly feminine appeal--the romance. Two major dime novel publishers, Beadle and Adams and Street and Smith, were quick to recognize the importance of women as a market for these books, and although women novelists were by no means relegated to producing only romance stories, they did contribute mightily to the genre.

The first Beadle and Adams dime novel, written by Ann S. Stephens, combined heart-wrenching pathos with the legends of the West. Published in 1860, it was entitled Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter and tells the story of a Native American woman who marries a white trapper. When Malaeska's husband dies, she leaves her young son with his paternal grandfather and returns to her tribe. On the eve of the son's marriage, she appears and tells him of his Native heritage. Overcome with grief and shame, he kills himself. His heartbroken mother dies as well.

Stephens's story originally had been published in The Ladies Companion in 1839. Reprinted as the first volume of Beadle's Dime Novels, the 128-page book sold some 300,000 copies in its first year. Mrs. Stephens was paid U.S.$250 for the rights to her tale.

Another very prolific writer of dime novels, and one who found her work a great deal more lucrative, was Laura Jean Libbey (1862-1924). In just over 40 years, Libbey completed 82 novels. She was so prolific that she often had multiple stories running in a number of different series at the same time.

Libbey's novels all had similar plots--stories that will be familiar to readers of today's romance novels. A young working-class girl, alone in the world, meets a man to whom she is attracted, though he is very much her social superior. He returns her affection, but, as in all romances, the course of love does not run smoothly. Inevitably, however, after many mishaps and separations, the couple marries.

In spite of having little formal education, Libbey was a savvy businesswoman, able to negotiate lucrative contracts. At one point she reported earning $60,000 a year from her work, which, if accurate, was an enormous sum, especially for a woman at the time. Unlike her heroines, Libbey herself did not wed until she was 36 years old. So centered was she on her reputation as a writer that in a curiously modern twist and in contrast with most of her peers, she insisted upon being known by her maiden name even after her marriage.

Another very successful dime novelist was Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, the wife of Beadle's editor Orville J. Victor. (Mrs. Victor was a published writer before she met her husband.) Her most popular novel, Maum Guinea and Her Plantation Children (1861), was a tale of slave life, which sold more than 100,000 copies. Translated into several languages, Maum Guinea was cited by the abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, as the novel that hindered the Confederacy's bid for British support, while Abraham Lincoln praised the book for being "as absorbing as Uncle Tom's Cabin."

Unlike many of her contemporaries, such as Laura Jean Libbey, who were prolific writers of sentimental romance but whose careers faded as interest in the genre waned, Victor was able to change her writing style to match the times. With the death of sentimental fiction, she turned her attention to humor and sensational romance. Indeed, she proved so adaptable that her novel The Dead Letter (1874), written under the pseudonym Seeley Register, is recognized as one of the earliest examples of the detective novel genre.