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THE
Beadle Collection
of
Dime Novels
Given to
The 'New York Public Library
By
Dr. Frank P. O'Brien
,. New York
1922
THE
Beadle Collection
of
Dime Novels
Given to
The New York Public Library
By
Dr. Frank P. O'Brien
New York
1922
REPRINTED JULY 1922
FROM THE
BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
OF JULY 1922
PRINTED AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
form \nm [vl 1-20-22 Bel
THE BEADLE COLLECTION
THROUGH the generosity of Dr. Frank P. O'Brien of New York, who
has given this collection to the Library, it is possible to place on exhibi-
tion about fourteen hundred of those rare little books and magazines which,
beginning about the year 1859, were issued in America under the broad and gen-
eral title of "Dime Novels." These are separate publications from the house
of Beadle and Adams, of which Erastus Beadle, the Otsego printer, was the
originator and guiding spirit. The remaining 171 items in Dr. O'Brien's gift
are examples of those other novels which sprang into existence as a result of
the popularity with which the Beadle books were greeted from their first appear-
ance. For lack of space, they are not in the exhibition. The collection, as
shown in the Main Exhibition Room, constitutes an absorbingly interesting
assemblage of a pioneer literature which has now wholly vanished, but which,
for a generation, exercised a profound influence on the country's thought,
character, and habits of mind.
No less than thirty-one various "types" or "series" of books, pamphlets,
magazines, and periodicals are embraced in the Beadle exhibit. Of certain
types which were published but for a short time only, or which have become
most difficult to discover, only a few copies are shown. Other varieties, whose
regular appearance extended over a considerable period of years, are in some
few instances represented by hundreds of different titles. The publications
are of all sizes, from little 24mos to large folio sheets as big as a modern news-
paper. More than half of the different series were originally issued in illus-
trated covers or wrappers of dififerent colors, and they are thus shown. They
come in brown, blue, orange, tan, green, yellow, red, buff and in various com-
binations of those hues, and in plain black-and-white. Nearly all are shown in
the exhibition cases in a manner to reveal their outward appearance and the
dramatic or quaint illustrations with which they were embellished, but certain
of the books of each variety are opened for a proper display of the title-pages.
Although every one of the thirty-one types of Beadle books (and doubt-
less many of the individual items also) will awaken vivid memories in the
minds of elder visitors, the dominating influence of the exhibition — especially
to those historically inclined — will be the effect which it produces as a whole.
The collection is literally saturated with the pioneer spirit of America. It por-
trays the struggles, exploits, trials, dangers, feats, hardships, and daily lives
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of the American pioneers from the days of the Puritans to the death of Custer,
and breathes the spirit which, for two and a half centuries, shaped the con-
quest and development of the Continent north of the Rio Grande. It is a litera-
ture intensely nationalistic and patriotic in character; obviously designed to
stimulate adventure, self-reliance and achievement; to exalt the feats of the
pioneer men and women who settled the country; and to recite the conditions
under which those early figures lived and did their work.
It is in those obvious qualities that the cause of the immense vogue of
the Beadle books is to be found during their generation. It w^as in those attri-
butes, also, that their equally great popular influence lay, and no serious student
who seeks to understand the history of this country and many of its present
tendencies, can fail to obtain a better understanding of such matters by a study
of the collection now on view. It is a clinic in the subject of mass psycholog}^;
as valuable to the university professor for its significant historical revelations
as it is to the gray-haired man to whom it recalls memories of boyhood.
Erastus Beadle, who did so much to perpetuate and glorify in print the
deeds of the American pioneers, w^as born in the village of Pierstow^n, Otsego
County, New York, September 11, 1821. His later interest in the subject of
American pioneer life, and his devotion to the cause of recording its annals,
is no doubt traceable to his own ancestry and to the experiences of his youth.
The grandfather of Erastus was Benjamin Beadle, of Wethersfield, Connec-
ticut, who fought in the Revolution under General John Sullivan and General
George Clinton. Four generations of Benjamin Beadle's ancestors were born
in or identified with Salem, Massachusetts, w^here Samuel Beadle died about
1664. Descendants of Samuel fought in the French and Indian Wars.
Benjamin, the Revolutionary soldier, removed to New York in 1796. He
traveled by sail-boat from Connecticut to New^ York City; thence up the Hud-
son to Lansingburg; and by horses and wagons overland through the wilder-
ness to Otsego County, on Stewart's Patent, near the present Richfield Springs.
This pioneer was married three times, and was the father of twenty-three chil-
dren. The father of Erastus was named Flavel Beadle, and was a son of
Benjamin's second wife. Flavel Beadle was eight years of age during the
journey into the New York wilderness, and was there later married to Polly
Tuller, who had come from Massachusetts.
In 1833, when Erastus was tw-elve years old, he, in his turn, was to enjoy
his first extensive experience of wilderness journeying. He accompanied the
rest of the family on an overland migration to the town of Schoolcraft, in
Kalamazoo County, Michigan Territory, which pilgrimage occupied many
weeks. But the Far West of those days did not suit Flavel Beadle, and he
brought his family back to New York about two years later.
As a boy, Erastus Beadle worked on a farm, and as apprentice to a miller.
It was while he was a miller's apprentice that he laid the foundation of his
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THE BEADLE COLLECTION 5
future career as a printer. Need arose in the mill one day for some letters to
be used in labeling the bags of grain. Erastus cut the letters from blocks of
hardwood, just as the old block-letters had been made in the days before Gut-
enberg. He then left the mill, and, with an alphabet of his home-made wooden
type, he traveled about the region stamping bags in various mills and similarly
marking lap robes, wagons, and other things. On reaching Cooperstown he
came to the attention of Elihu Phinney, the pioneer printer of that town, who
offered him work. In Phinney's establishment Erastus learned to be a type-
setter, stereotyper, printer, and binder, and with these abilities as his only
capital he moved to the village of Buffalo in 1847. By 1852 he had a printing
shop of his own, and in that year he issued his first publication, entitled "The
Youth's Casket.." In 1856 he began to issue the excellent magazine called "The
Home Monthly" (shown in the exhibition), and two years later he removed
to New York City to test his great idea.
This plan was to issue "Dime" publications, and possibly had its immedi-
ate origin in the unusual success in Buffalo, of a "Dime Song Book" in which
he had assembled a number of the penny lyrics of the period. These had been
earlier issued in separate broadsides, by various publishers.
The New York issues of the song books also made an immediate hit, and
were swiftly followed by a number of the miscellaneous hand-books shown
in the present exhibition. Then, in the summer of 1860, came the first of the
original "Dime Novels" in their orange covers. Success was assured from
the start, and the publishing activities of Beadle and Company speedily grew
to vast proportions.
Many of the best writers of the period, who possessed intimate knowl-
edge of American pioneer life, were asked to put the conditions and events of
earlier generations into attractive form. Among those whose help was thus
enlisted were Judge Jared Hall, Francis Fuller Barritt, John Neal, Mayne
Reid, Mrs. Victor, Colonel A. J. H. Duganne, Edward S. Ellis, William
Eyster, Ann Stephens, Judge William Busteed, N. C. Iron, Herrick Johnstone,
James L. Bowen, Mary Denison, John Warner, Charles Dunning Clark, and
various others.
The little books they wrote were inspired by Erastus Beadle, and his
influence is seen in the fact that every phase of pioneer life, and every his-
toric event in which his own ancestors had taken part, is treated in the series
of Beadle books. The editorship of the house was entrusted to Orville J.
Victor, one of the most remarkable figures in the history of American litera- -J^
ture. For thirty years, Victor personally studied, passed upon, and edited
the thousands of publications of the House of Beadle. He insisted, first of all,
that the narratives must be true and accurate portrayals, in spirit, of the
pioneer times and people with which they dealt. They had to reveal wilder-
ness life and struggle as it was, and depict the conditions amid which the
6 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
pioneers did their work. These tales were not history in the hteral or text-
book sense, since they often incorporated incidents for which there was no
authentic or contemporary proof. But such material, if used, had to be con-
sistent with known conditions of the period portrayed.
Doubtless it was the mass-realization of these facts, on the part of the
public, that brought about such recognition of the so-called "Dime Novels."
The people were absorbingly interested in the earlier life of the pioneers, and
when it was presented to them in the form inspired by Beadle and directed by
\'ictor, they — as the slang phrase now goes — "ate it up." "Here at last" —
they doubtless intuitively felt — "is the real thing, not set before us as a dull
task to memorize, but as a vital picture to be studied and enjoyed, and from
V which we may learn."
Then came the Civil War, and the soldiers literally absorbed the con-
venient little books by the million. The volumes were exchanged, passed from
hand to hand, read to tatters, and then thrown away. Throughout the thirty
or more years in which the Beadle books held ascendancy they were so cheap,
and so common, that they w^ere almost never saved. In that respect they suf-
fered the fate of all common things. It is almost always the case that the com-
monest objects of one generation become the rarest Objects of two generations
afterward. Their very commonness is the quality that keeps them from being
treasured by their original possessors. Hence they disappear. Beadle books,
in their day, were as countless as the bison of the plains or the passenger pigeon
of the air. Yet to-day only a few hundred bison are alive, and are carefully
protected, while not one passenger pigeon is known to exist.
'^ After the Civil War — to a much greater extent than before that struggle
— Beadle and Victor turned their attention to the Far West and enlisted the
aid of numerous western explorers, Indian fighters and plainsmen in portray-
ing that part of the country. Erastus Beadle, himself, made a trip across the
plains in order to study, at first hand, the life in those regions. Among those
whose knowledge of the West was thus embodied in the Beadle books were
Dr. Frank Powell, Captain "Bruin" Adams, Buffalo Bill, Major Sam Hall
(known as Buckskin Sam), Major St. Vrain, Joseph Badger, Prentiss Ingra-
ham. Captain Alfred Taylor, T. C. Harbaugh, Lieutenant Hazeltine, Captain
Monstery, Captain Frederick Whittaker, Lieutenant J. H. Randolph, Major
Henry B. Stoddard, Lieutenant Alfred Thorne, Captain Jack Crawford (the
Poet Scout), Ensign Charles Dudley Warren, Dr. Carver, Henry Inman,
Albert D. Richardson, Dr. J. H. Robinson, Lieutenant James Magoon, Profes-
sor William R. Eyster, Oil Coomes, Captain T. B. Shields, J. B. Omohundro
(who was "Texas Jack"), and dozens of others whose years of personal knowl-
edge and actual adventure were incorporated in their writings.
For a long time a considerable part of the reading public in the East
looked upon these tales from the Far West as unadulterated fiction, entirely
THE BEADLE COLLECTION 7
harmful in its effect. Uncounted armies of boys who lived between the Mis-
sissippi and the Atlantic were taken to the woodsheds by their fathers, and
there subjected to severe physical and mental anguish as a result of the parental
discovery that they were reading such "impossible trash." But the intuition
of the boys was a truer guide* — in this matter at least — than the opinions of
those parents who did not read the books, and it has finally come to be realized
that the pictures of pioneer life in the Far West, as presented by the Beadle
books, are substantially accurate portrayals of the strange era and characters
therein depicted. As a matter of fact, the men and women who wrote those
narratives for the House of Beadle succeeded much better in their task than
hearsay chroniclers who also undertook it. The Beadle books present a more
accurate and vivid picture of the appearance, manner, speech, habits and
methods of the pioneer western characters than do the more formal historians.
The reason for that circumstance lies in the fact that writers chosen by Beadle
and Victor were ones w'ho had lived the life of which they told, and were
familiar with its fundamental, day-by-day qualities. That advantage enabled
them to get closer to real conditions than the distant commentators and hearsay
chroniclers whose methods of narration were in a considerable degree ham-
pered by existing conventionalities of historical writing, whose viewpoint of
western life had not been shaped by long or intimate contact with it. Much
of the biographical material relating to famous western characters, which is
embodied in various Beadle books, is not to be found elsewhere. And, since
the lives of the men thus treated are an integral and essential part of western
history, the importance now placed on such biographical and regional material
is easily seen.
In the years when the little Beadle volumes were common, and at the
height of their popularity, they were often denounced from the pulpit as
pernicious and evil in their influence upon the men and boys who read them
so avidly. But such condemnation was due to ignorance of their character.
Of late years that judgment has been radically reversed. The present esteem
in which they are held was in part stated by Charles Harvey, in an article on
the subject published by him in the Atlantic Monthly for July, 1907.
Mr. Harvey said:
"Ethically they were uplifting. The hard drinkers, and the grotesquely
profane and picturesquely depraved persons who take leading roles in many
of the dime novels of recent times were inexorably shut out from their pro-
genitors of Beadle's days.
"These tales incited a love of reading among the youth of the country. . .
Many of the boys and girls who encountered Pontiac, Boone, the renegade
8 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Girty, Mad Anthony, Kenton, and Black Hawk in their pages were incited
to find out something more about those characters and their times, and thus
were introduced to much of the nation's story and geography. ManHness and
womanhness among the readers were cultivated by these Httle books, not by
homilies, but by example. It can be truthfully said that the taste and tone of
the life of the generation which grew up with these tales were improved by
them. No age limit was set up among Beadle's readers. Lincoln w^as one
of them."
When Lincoln sent Henry Ward Beecher to England as a Special Com-
missioner, in an effort to wan support for the Union from the English Cabinet,
it was Victor, editor of the House of Beadle, whose "Address to the English
People" gave material aid to the President's representative. After Beecher had
returned he discussed these things with Victor, and said to him: "Your little
book and Mrs. Victor's novel [referring to 'Maum Guinea'] were a telling
series of shots in the right spot."
It was Victor, also, who wrote the life of Lincoln included in the "Lives
of Great Americans" series, and who, in his hastily composed memorial preface
to that volume, summarized the dead President in a manner not excelled by
anv other writer of the period. Victor therein said: "Few men realized the
magnitude of his task — it was too mighty for comprehension; few men
were dispassionate enough to judge justly; few were wise enough to judge
understandingly."
Such w^as the man who, under the guidance of Erastus Beadle, chose and
edited the pioneer literature which, for a generation, molded the thought and
ambitions of America's youth. That literature itself has almost disappeared,
but its effects on the national life are every w^here still present.
In the exhibition are shown about sixty-eight different examples of the
famous "original yellow back" Dime Novels, which began to appear in 1860.
No less than seventeen of the first twenty-five titles constituting this series are
embraced in the collection. Number 8 is a first edition copy of Edward Ellis'
celebrated "Seth Jones," a story of the New York Wilderness in 1785. More
than 450,000 copies of this book had been sold in America before 1865, and
it had been translated into seven foreign languages. Number 9, "The Slave
Sculptor," illustrates the little known bibliographical fact that Beadle and
Company issued English editions of many of these books from 44 Paternoster
Row, London. The English editions were printed from the American stereo-
type plates, with specially prepared title-pages. It was during the issuance of
the first few titles of the original Dime Novels that various experiments were
made by the publishers in the form and color of these books. Numbers 10, 11
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THE BEADLE COLLECTION 9
and 12 illustrate such changes. But the appearance adopted in Number 11
was finally chosen, and thenceforth was adhered to during the printing of over
300 books in the yellow-back series. Among other titles included in this type
is a copy of Mrs. Victor's "Maum Guinea," which was preferred by President
Lincoln, as a portrayal of slavery, over Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Still other celebrated issues among the yellow-backs shown are Ellis' "Rifle-
men of the ]\Iiami," Frances Barritt's "The Land Claim," and Ann Stephen's
"Story of the Oregon Trail."
The second series of Beadle books portraying pioneer conditions and-^
events was called the "Pocket Novels," which began to appear about 1869
or 1870. These were of the same 12mo size as their predecessors, but the
previous uniformity of coloring was abandoned for a more brilliant appear-
ance and each cover was given a multi-colored illustration on a solid background
of red, green, blue or brown. Some sixty-four titles of this series are dis-
played, and almost without exception they deal with historical pioneer con-
ditions, events and personages. Among these books the visitor will find "Mad
Anthony's Scouts," by Rodman; Whittaker's "Boone the Hunter" and "Dick
Darling" (the pony expressman) ; "Billy Bowlegs"; and "The Sons of Liberty"
and "Mohawk Nat," by the historian Charles Dunning Clark, who wrote for
Beadle under the pen name of W. J. Hamilton. Clark wrote no less than seven-
teen of the "Pocket Novels" books, nearly all of them dealing with the periods
and circumstances of the French-Indian wars in New York, Virginia and
Pennsylvania, or with the scenes of the Revolution, phases of national his-
tory upon which Clark was a specialist. Many of the "Pocket" series also dealt
with the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys from 1780 to 1815,
and with the Far West from 1849 to 1869. This "Pocket" series is biblio-
graphically known as Type B of the Beadle publications, while the original
yellow-backed books belong to Type A.
The next two groups — Types D and E — have a common title, the
"Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure," and are distinguished from
one another by the larger size and earlier issuance of the Type D items.
They are imperial octavo in size, whereas the Type E publications are ordinary
octavos. Both are uncolored, and have their title-pages entirely occupied with
bold black-and-white illustrations. The Type D books are somewhat different
in various qualities from their predecessors, and were obviously designed to
create an interest in foreign countries, peoples and customs as well as in Ameri-
can adventure. A typical item of this class is Harbaugh's "Snow Shoe Tom,
or New York Boys in the Wilderness," wherein the veteran author (who is
still living in Ohio) instructs his readers regarding camp and wilderness life in
Maine, in moose-hunting, fishing, trapping, the making of snow-shoes, and self-
reliance in the woods. The Type E books are concerned almost wholly with
life in the Far West, and with the lives and adventures of celebrated plainsmen.
10 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Among these titles are Aiken's story of the exploits of "Kit Carson"; Joseph
Badger's Autobiography (written under the pen name of Post); and Ingra-
ham's biography of the celebrated scout called Texas Jack, whose real name
was J. B. Omohundro.
A series of little 12mo paper books having about 100 pages each, with
colored illustrations on orange-red covers, come next in the exhibition. These
are of the "New Dime Novels" series, known in bibliographical realms as
Type F. There are no less than 114 of them, all in remarkable condition con-
sidering that some were copyrighted as early as 1866, and none are less than
forty years old. These books, like the original dime publications and the Pocket
series, are devoted to the early Indian wars, to various pioneer conditions and
events, to the settlement of the Mississippi Valley and to the Far West. Among
the titles displayed in this section are "Eph Peters, the Scout of the Mohawk
Valley," by Clark; "Indian Jim," a story of the Minnesota Massacres of 1862,
by Ellis; "W'ingenund," by Murray; "The Grizzly -Hunters," by Captain Whit-
taker; a Sioux narrative under the title of "Old Zip," by Bruin Adams; John
Neal's description of the Maine "Moosehunter"; and Whittaker's story of
"The Death's Head Rangers" of Texas.
Next among the various varieties of publications are the "American
Tales." These (the Type G books) have become particularly rare, and are
represented by but five examples. They are octavos with brown pictorial
covers. One of these, entitled "The Blue Brotherhood, or the Young Patroon's
Inheritance," deals with the events of the Mohawk Valley during the Revolu-
tion, and with the manor house of Abram Van Kempen, which was then known
as "Van Kempen's Castle."
Most spectacular and attractive of all, in their outward appearance, are
the books of the Type H series. These are likewise octavos, published in 1870
and the years immediately following, and they have dramatically drawn covers
published in colors. For a long time it was not known by modern bibliogra-
phers that these tales were published by Beadle, since, almost without excep-
tion, they bear an imprint reading "Frank Starr and Company, Publishers,
41 Piatt Street." Investigation, however, at length disclosed that Frank Starr
was a foreman in Beadle's employ, and that 41 Piatt Street was a rear entrance
to the Beadle establishment. And finally a copy of "The Texan Spy" of this
series was discovered, with the Beadle imprint on the title-page, and also a
Beadle copyright, although the "Frank Starr" attribution appears on the front
cover. The title-page of "The Texan Spy," which ultimately settled the prob-
lem, is shown in the exhibition. Although this series is among the most rare,
no less than thirty-nine examples are in the collection. They embrace histori-
cal tales dealing with Kit Carson, the Gulf Pirates, the Black Hawk War,
Pioneer Life in Texas, the New York Wilderness, the Seminole War, Early
California, the Trappers of the West, the Civil War, Early Ohio, Marion's
THE BEADLE COLLECTION H
Rangers, the Settlement of the Susquehanna Region, and many other equally
absorbing phases of American pioneer conditions.
Following comes an assemblage of very different outward aspect. These