Dime novels captivated readers with sensational fictitious stories in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Called dime novels because the first examples cost just ten cents, dime novels appeared at regular intervals and told exciting stories of adventure, mystery, and romance. Readers were encouraged to collect and read whole series of novels featuring a favorite hero or a type of adventure. Costs were kept down by printing the novels on low-quality paper, often with drawn illustrations. By 1900, several publishers had entered the market and in their heyday each title could sell millions of copies. The popularity of pulp magazines (see entry under 1930s—Print Culture in volume 2), radio (see entry under 1920s—TV and Radio in volume 2), and cinema squeezed dime novels out of the entertainment market by the 1920s. No original titles appeared after that decade.

The first dime novel was Maleska, the Indian...