The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, July 1945 - April, 1946 Page: 329
717 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Dime Novel Texas
thrilling hunts for mustangs (buffalo or bears), fancy shoot-
ing and hand-to-hand encounters with wild beasts-war with
the Mexicans (Comanches or Apaches), reverses, final victory
and its sweet reward-and always plenty of redskins (Mexi-
cans or outlaws) biting the dust!
These were the people and these were the most frequent
happenings in Dime Novel Texas.
Were the impressions all wrong? Indeed not. Most Dime
Novels are short historical novels-many are semi-biographical
or based on actual incidents. While in most instances they
are properly classified as "lurid sub-literature," they did much
to teach the young American his history lesson and to en-
courage him to read other and better historical fiction and
narratives. After all, it is but a short step from Buckskin
Sam's Wild Wolf, the Waco; or, Big-Foot Wallace to the Front
to Duval's The Adventures of Big-Foot Wallace, the Texas
Ranger and Hunter. The bound volume by Duval doubtlessly
looked rather formidable to many a young reader-but then
why should he hold back? Was it not about his frontier hero,
"Ole Big-Foot," and bound to be exciting-and true? Many a
boy first risked a dime for Rathborne's The Hunter Hercules;
or, The Champion Rider of the Plains before making the
greater expenditure of twenty-five cents for a paper covered
or $1.00 for a cloth-bound Siringo's A Texas Cowboy. Charles
J. Finger, in his fine book, After the Great Companions, lauded
the exciting "derring-do" Dime Novels for leading their readers
to seek enlarged experiences in the field of action literature-
Irving, Cooper, Scott, and Dana.
The Creators
Gerald Carlton (Munro), Major Samuel S. Hall, and Colonel
Prentiss Ingraham (both Beadle authors) were the leaders,
but there were several other faithful workers in the sub-
literature of Dime Novel Texas including 011 Coomes, Captain
Mayne Reid, Edward S. Ellis, Joseph E. Badger, Jr., Frederick
Whittaker, Edward Willett, and C. Dunning Clark, all Beadle
laborers.
Little is known about the private life of Gerald Carlton, but
the other two members of the Big Three were rather well
known-in a kind of blend of fact and fiction, dime-novelish
sort of way. Major Sam S. Hall, "Buckskin Sam," was a New
York boy who went to Texas at the age of fifteen. He is329
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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/m1/384/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.