The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, July 1945 - April, 1946 Page: 332
717 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
forty years, published the first Dime Novel about Texas. The
author was Ellis, then twenty, and the year was 1861. It
appeared as one of the famous yellowbacks, No. 32, in the
original series "Beadle's Dime Novels" with the title Irona; or,
Life on the Southwest Border. It was (and is) an interesting
tale of a flatboat trip up the Rio Colorado to a point beyond
Austin, an overland journey to the mountains, encounters with
Comanches, and, as an added attraction, the White Steed of
the Prairies appears for the first but, by no means, last time
in a Dime Novel. Thus began the legend that resulted in Dime
Novel Texas.
Apparently the next Dime Novel having a Texas setting was
Gerald Carlton's Scar-Cheek, the Wild Half-Breed; or, A Chase
After the Savages of the Frontier, issued by George Munro
and Company, New York, in 1864, as No. 28 in "Munro's Ten
Cent Novels." It was written under his favorite military pseu-
donym of "Captain Latham C. Carlton." Carlton was a heavy
contributor to the creation of Dime Novel Texas.
Erastus P. Beadle and associates had issued Malaeska by
Mrs. Ann Stephens, the first complete book of fiction to sell
for ten cents, in June, 1860, as No. 1 in the famous yellowback
series "Beadle's Dime Novels." After Irona by Ellis in 1861, it
was 1869, however, before the Beadle authors began to con-
tribute heavily to the Texas illusion. In that year Percy B. St.
John's The White Canoe; or, the Spirit of the Lake, a tale of
Comanche hatred for and bitter warfare against the Texans, was
issued as "Beadle's Dime Novels," No. 169. From that time
on Beadle's contributions to Dime Novel Texas were great-
after all, his opportunities were frequent since Beadle published
some thirty different series of Dime and Nickel Novels between
1860 and 1900, as many as six or seven series at the same time.
George Munro, a former employee of Beadle, was Beadle's
strongest rival for many years; Munro was the second pub-
lisher to enter the dime fiction field and was also second to issue
a Dime Novel Texas item.
The success of Beadle resulted in many imitators, including
Robert DeWitt, who went so far as to use an almost duplicating
"yellowback" for his series, "DeWitt's Ten Cent Romances."
"We require unquestioned originality" was one of the primary
rules fixed by Beadle for the guidance of his authors, but
DeWitt reprinted, rewrote, and perhaps "pirated" the works
of some of the favorite writers of the day. At least six of the332
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, July 1945 - April, 1946, periodical, 1946; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146056/m1/387/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.