dime novel

noun

: a usually paperback melodramatic novel

especially : one popular in the U.S. from about the mid-19th century to the early 20th often featuring a Western theme

Examples of dime novel in a Sentence

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Read More: Fans React to Beyoncé's New Album Cowboy Carter Once seen as ruffians and pushed to the outskirts of Victorian society, cowboys were reinvented as rugged cultural heroes in the American consciousness in the early 20th century through dime novels, rodeos, movies, and more. —

TIME, 12 Apr. 2024 Newspapers breathlessly covered the thefts, as did Western dime novels and traveling Wild West shows. —

Malia Wollan, New York Times, 23 Jan. 2024 The brothel girls sent Dorothy on errands and paid her with their dime novels. —

cleveland, 23 Feb. 2020 Though many prominent opinion-havers rage about the imminent death of the English language at the hands of emoji-wielding teenagers, the Internet has done no more harm to English than television, radio, or dime novels. —

Mara Katz, Ars Technica, 2 Nov. 2019 But the frontier was closed, and its memory was already being turned into myth in dime novels, westerns, and Wild West shows. —

David Treuer, Harper's magazine, 10 Jan. 2019 Westerns have been selling variations on this sort of story since the silent days (and in dime novels before that). —

Michael Phillips, Detroit Free Press, 18 May 2018