The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term dime novel has been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, referring to story papers, five- and ten-cent weeklies, "thick book" reprints, and sometimes early pulp magazines. The term was used as a title as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp magazine Western Dime Novels. In the modern age, the term dime novel has been used to refer to quickly written, lurid potboilers, usually as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized but superficial literary work.
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".
A paperback book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardback (hardcover) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) was founded in London in 1826, mainly at the instigation of Whig MP Henry Brougham, with the object of publishing information to people who were unable to obtain formal teaching or who preferred self-education. It was a largely Whig organisation, and published inexpensive texts intended to adapt scientific and similarly high-minded material for the rapidly-expanding reading public over twenty years until it was disbanded in 1846.
Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the 19th century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typically referred to a story published in weekly parts of 8 to 16 pages, each costing one penny. The subject matter of these stories was typically sensational, focusing on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. First published in the 1830s, penny dreadfuls featured characters such as Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin, Varney the Vampire, and Spring-heeled Jack.
Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant. Her fictional works cover "domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural".
A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 12, 16, or 24 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. Printers provided chapbooks on credit to chapmen, who sold them both from door to door and at markets and fairs, then paying for the stock they sold. The tradition of chapbooks emerged during the 16th century as printed books were becoming affordable, with the medium ultimately reaching its height of popularity during the 17th and 18th centuries. Different ephemera and popular or folk literature were published as chapbooks, such as almanacs, children's literature, folklore, ballads, nursery rhymes, pamphlets, poetry, and political and religious tracts. The term chapbook remains in use by publishers to refer to short, inexpensive booklets.
Charles Edward Mudie , English publisher and founder of Mudie's Lending Library and Mudie's Subscription Library, was the son of a second-hand bookseller and newsagent. Mudie's efficient distribution system and vast supply of texts revolutionized the circulating library movement, while his "select" library influenced Victorian middle-class values and the structure of the three-volume novel. He was also the first publisher of James Russell Lowell's poems in England, and of Emerson's Man Thinking.
The three-volume novel was a standard form of publishing for British fiction during the nineteenth century. It was a significant stage in the development of the modern novel as a form of popular literature in Western culture.
Michael Sadleir, born Michael Thomas Harvey Sadler, was a British publisher, novelist, book collector, and bibliographer.
Bernard Edward Joseph Capes was an English author.
This is a list of works by the English historical novelist William Harrison Ainsworth (1805–1882).
William Pickering was an English publisher and bookseller, notable for various innovations in publishing. He is sometimes credited with introducing edition binding in cloth to British publishing.
J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd was a book printer and publisher based in Bristol, England. It became a limited company in 1911, having been an unincorporated company named Arrowsmith. It was closed in 2006.
Robert Lee Wolff was a Harvard history professor, known for his 1956 book The Balkans in our time and his library collection of English novels of the Victorian period with over 18,000 items.
John Thomas Dicks (1818–1881) was a publisher in London in the 19th century. He issued popular, affordably priced fiction and drama, such as "shilling Shakespeares and wonderfully cheap reprints of Scott and other standard authors." Earlier in his career he worked with Peter Perring Thoms and George W. M. Reynolds. Employees included illustrator Frederick Gilbert. Readers included Thomas Burt and Havelock Ellis. Dicks retired in the 1870s, when his sons took over the firm which continued into the 1960s.
Simms and McIntyre was a 19th century printing and publishing company from Belfast, Ireland. The company published The Parlour Library, an innovative book series of cheap reprints of titles in attractive physical formats and sold at very low prices, both of which features which were later imitated by other publishers.
Jacob Nathaniel Blanck was an American bibliographer, editor, and children's writer. Born in Boston, he attended local schools and briefly ran a bookshop before being hired to assist on a bibliography of American first editions. He wrote for periodicals on the book trade and worked as a bibliographer in libraries including the Library of Congress in the 1940s and 1950s. Blanck also published two children's books. In the early 1940s, he founded a bibliography project that became Bibliography of American Literature, a selective bibliography of American literature. It was completed by 1992, after Blanck's death.
Simpkin & Marshall was a British bookseller, wholesaler and publisher. The firm was founded in 1819 and traded until the 1940s. For many decades the firm was Britain's largest book wholesaler and a respected family-owned company, but it was acquired by the media proprietor Robert Maxwell and went bankrupt in 1954, an event which, according to Lionel Leventhal, "sounded a warning to the book trade about Captain Robert Maxwell's way of doing business".
Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations is an anthology of translated German stories in three volumes, published in 1823.
