dime novel
a cheap melodramatic or sensational novel, usually in paperback and selling for ten cents, especially such an adventure novel popular c1850 to c1920.
Origin of dime novel
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use dime novel in a sentence
That he should have read or studied anything beyond drill and dime novels was not to be expected.
A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike | Charles KingMy aunt reported to my mother that the book was very "indelicate" and after that Beadle's "Dime Novels" were absolutely forbidden.
Confessions of a Book-Lover | Maurice Francis Egan"But dime novels corrupt the morals of boys," suggested some one of the company.
Recollections of a Varied Life | George Cary EgglestonThere was something fascinatingly mysterious in his tones and actions to that youth, who devoured dime novels on the sly.
Si Klegg, Book 5 (of 6) | John McElroyHe had a pile of three hundred or more dime novels and some of his favorites he had read so often that they were mere rags.
In Pawn | Ellis Parker Butler
British Dictionary definitions for dime novel
US (formerly) a cheap melodramatic novel, usually in paperback: Also called (esp Brit): penny-dreadful
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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