SOURCE: “Judging Books by Their Covers: Format, the Implied Reader, and the ‘Degeneration’ of the Dime Novel,” in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, Vol. 12, No. 3, September, 1998, pp. 247-63.
In the essay below, Erickson argues that the transformation of the distribution and packaging of dime novels—rather than fundamental changes in the content of the stories—led to their decline.
This is a free excerpt of 59 words. There are 7,365 words (approx.
25 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Dime Novels: Critical Essay by Paul J. Erickson Access Pass.
