In the United States is the 19th century, a dime novel was a low-priced novel that could be purchased for a dime. The original dime novels were published in a tabloid format.
Dime novels and penny dreadfuls often involved melodramatic tales of vice and virtue in conflict, often with strong elements of horror and cruelty.
Many American dime novels, on the other hand, had inspirational themes. Horatio Alger, Jr. was a notable writer in this genre. Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair often wrote dime novels under pseudonyms. New York City-based firm Street & Smith, founded in 1855, was one of the most prolific publishers of the genre.
Philip Pullman has written several "modern penny dreadfuls" in this style including The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well, (The Sally Lockhart Trilogy) which, while themselves penny dreadfuls, also incorporate the atmosphere in which the novels thrived.
Stanford University has a collection of over 8,000 individual dime novels, and a web site devoted to the subject.
Term dimenovel originally referred to pocket-sized, hundred-page books with woodcut illustrations on the paper covers but it came to designate any fiction selling between five and twenty-five cents.
Violence: The dime Western was the medium most responsible for disseminating that image of violence; it was the means of carrying a sensational, violent West with you while you rode on an elevated train in Manhattan or waited for the fighting to begin at Shiloh.
The dimenovel marks the cultivation of what finally became the dimenovel's chief readership: adolescent boys.
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