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assist in better understanding the world they lived in. On the non-fiction front, some issues distributed during the war carried information on different Federal officers. For example, an issue dated November 14, 1862, offered an installment in the ‘Men of the Time’ series, which featured background stories on Generals Hooker, Rosecrans, Grant, McClernand, and Ormsby Mitchell. Editors included illustrations of some of these men, like the shown image of Grant. For those interested in the history of dime novels, please visit the companion site, Paper for the People, at https://exhibits.library.villanova. edu/dime-novels. Next month, we will investigate additional primary sources. Until then, good luck in researching the Civil War!
Dime Novels During the war, soldiers loved to read, especially during the downtime in camp. Newspapers, letters from home (the favorite of most), the Bible, and various dime novels populated the literary menu for the voracious consumers. Dime novels, which gained in popularity in this country during the years leading up to the war, skyrocketed in the number of new titles introduced in 1861. This trend continued through 1865 and beyond. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library, researchers can access dime novels online at https:// dimenovels.org, and peruse various issues beginning in 1852, and running through 2019. This site serves, as indicated in the name - Dime Novel Bibliography - as a collection
August 2020
Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, instructor, and a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, the Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com, or to request speaking engagements, via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/
Dime Novel homepage.
March 17, 1862 cover of Beadle’s Dime.
point, which indexes dime novels held in several different repositories. Villanova staff continue their digitization efforts, so bookmark this site and check back periodically, and visit them on Facebook and Twitter; follow them on either social media platform to receive updates more quickly Begin your journey at the homepage (pictured above) and request a free account for full access to the site. Various filtering options exist; this writer decided to use the ‘by year’ method to quickly access issues from the war years. Researchers will profit in reading the same material many soldiers viewed 160 years ago. Even the fictional accounts can add meaning to the thoughts of the soldiers, and
U.S. Grant illustration in Dime Novel.
michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @ michaelkshaffer.
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