The Beadle Collection of Dime Novels / Given to the New York Public Library By Dr. Frank P. O'Brien

Erastus F. Beadle David Adams Irwin Beadle (?)
THE FIRM OF BEADLE AND ADAMS, 1862
REPRINTED JULY 1922 FROM THE BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY OF JULY 1922
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 exhibition about fourteen hundred of those rare little books and magazines which, beginning about the year 1859, were issued in America under the broad and general 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 appearance. 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 newspaper. More than half of the different series were originally issued in illustrated covers or wrappers of different colors, and they are thus shown. They come in brown, blue, orange, tan, green, yellow, red, buff and in various combinations 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.