History Main / DimeNovel

* Old Sleuth: Another GreatDetective (first appearing in 1872).
* Old King Brady: A GreatDetective (1885).
* Old Cap Collier: A GreatDetective (1883).
* Deadwood Dick: An adventurer operating in TheWildWest (1877).
* Diamond Dick: A fighter for justice in TheWildWest (1878).
* Frank Reade: I-Jr-III: Teenage inventors (see below).
* Jack Wright: Another teenage inventor (1891).
* Frank Merriwell: An UsefulNotes/IvyLeague (he was a Yale man) athlete and adventurer (1896).

We're spoiled today. If you want entertainment, we got movies, video games, books, music, comics and many other things. You want a story, you have many choices.

High-brow critics quickly derided the quality of the storytelling, and "dime novel" soon became a derogatory term for cheap[[note]]Literally. A dime went a lot further back then, but adjusted for inflation it's still cheaper than most novels today, with 10 cents in 1865 being worth $1.72 in 2022. [[/note]], sensationalistic stories in general.

* TheChick: The defining characteristic of many of the female characters. Sadly, their sheer lack of characterization resulted in many boys objecting to ''any'' female character on the basis that she would 'inevitably' turn out to be bland and uninteresting.
* DamselInDistress: Women did not get much in the way of important roles, that was for sure.

People in the 19th century weren't so lucky. With entertainment being far more limited, you had to learn to enjoy what little you could get your hands on. Around the time of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, literacy in the US began to increase considerably, and just around then, a new form of entertainment was invented. The dime novel.[[note]]The British equivalent of this at the time was known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful Penny Dreadful]], and sometimes dime novel stories saw a transatlantic adaptation in the UK.[[/note]]

The dime novel style of storytelling lives on even today. Cliffhanger movies tell essentially the same types of stories as dime novels, and the ''Franchise/IndianaJones'' and ''[[Film/TheMummyTrilogy The Mummy]]'' movies are essentially the dime novel in big budget form. While our entertainment today is much more sophisticated, there's still a market for low-brow high adventure stories. Heck, even many of today's video games have roots in these.

People in the 19th century weren't so lucky. With entertainment being far more limited, you had to learn to enjoy what little you could get your hands on. Around the time of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, literacy in the US began to increase considerably, and just around then, a new form of entertainment was invented. The dime novel.[[note]]The British equivalent of this at the time was known as the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful Penny Dreadful]], and sometimes dime novel stories saw a transatlantic adaptation in the UK.[[/note]]

* TheChick - The defining characteristic of many of the female characters. Sadly, their sheer lack of characterization resulted in many boys objecting to ''any'' female character on the basis that she would 'inevitably' turn out to be bland and uninteresting.
* DistressedDamsel - Women did not get much in the way of important roles, that was for sure.

* MightyWhitey - The hero naturally tends to become this when he visits any exotic land.

* TrainJob - When focusing on famous outlaws of the time, particularly Jesse James.