Beadle and Adams (1872-1898)

The Beadle Dime Novels , together with numerous other publications issued by the firms Beadle and Co., Irwin P. Beadle and Co., and Beadle and Adams, were a tremendously successful foray in cheap literature for the mass public. Dime novels, like the story papers that had preceded them and the pulp magazines that would replace them in the twentieth century, delivered adventurous or sensational stories in inexpensive, paper-bound editions. Although the Beadle brothers, Erastus and Irwin, were not the first publishers to exploit this medium, they were the first to do so in a continuous, serial form. This innovation, combined with their large number of publications and sales, makes their firm an integral part of the history of the dime novel.

Erastus Flavel Beadle was born in Oswego County, New York, on September 9, 1821. His brother, Irwin Pedro Beadle, was born in 1826. They were the grandsons of Benjamin Beadle, a Revolutionary War solider. After a brief move to Michigan, the Beadles returned to New York, settling in Chataqua County. There, Erastus worked for a miller named Hayes, where he supposedly began his printing career when he cut wooden letters to label bags of grain. In 1838, he was apprenticed to H & E Phinny, a publishing firm in Cooperstown, New York, where he learned typesetting, stereotyping, binding, and some engraving. He married Mary Ann Pennington in 1846, and the next year the couple moved to Buffalo, where Erastus worked as a stereotyper. In 1849, Irwin followed his brother to Buffalo and found a job as a bookbinder. The next year, the brothers set up a stereotype foundry of their own, although Irwin would leave the company in 1856.

In December of 1851, Erastus Beadle, together with engraver Benjamin Vanduzee, began publishing a magazine for young children entitled The Youth’s Casket. Vanduzee dropped out of the partnership in 1853, but the magazine continued publication until 1856. Erastus’ next project, in 1855, was the monthly magazine, The Home: A Fireside Companion and Guide for the Wife, the Mother, the Sister, and the Daughter . In 1856, Erastus briefly abandoned publishing and moved to Omaha in an attempt to capitalize on the Kansas and Nebraska land boom. During his absence, Robert Adams, a former apprentice in Beadle’s stereotyping foundry who would become the Beadles’ future partner in the dime book trade, probably took over publication of the two serials at this time.

After failing to make his fortune out west, Erastus returned to Buffalo in 1857. The next year, he, Irwin, and Robert Adams moved to New York City, where Erastus and Adams continued to publish The Home . The December issue of the magazine had a new editor, Mrs. Metta Victoria Victor (1831–1885), who would write several novels for Beadle and Adams, including the popular slave story Maum Guinea, which was reportedly praised by Lincoln. Her husband, Orville J. Victor (1827–1910), would work as the main editor for the Beadle house from 1861 to 1897.

While his brother worked in magazines, Irwin began the dime booklet business that would make the Beadle name famous, although Erastus would eventually receive most of the profits and the credit for its creation. In 1859, he published the Dime Song Book, a paper-bound collection of popular ballads that had previously been issued singly. It sold well, and encouraged by its success, Irwin began publishing a series of dime booklets on such varied subjects as cooking, etiquette, speeches, and baseball. At the end of this year, Irwin and Adams formed the publishing firm Irwin P. Beadle and Co.

1860 saw the inception of the first Beadle novel series; the Beadle Dime Novel, with its distinct orange cover, would include 631 numbers and run until 1885. Its first publication, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, was a 128 page story by Ann S. Stephens and was promoted as “a dollar book for a dime.” Although the majority of Beadle publications were written expressly for the firm, Stephen’s story was, like many others to follow, a reprint from an earlier publication, in this case, from a 1839 issue of The Ladies’ Companion. The novel sold well, with some estimates at 300,000 the first year. The eighth novel, Seth Jones by Stanley Ellis, reportedly sold twice as many, according to a possibly exaggerated estimate by Erastus Beadle. The preferred subjects in the firm’s early days were pioneer and revolutionary war stories, with titles like The Backwood Bride; a Romance of Squatter Life (1860) and The Shawnee Scout; or The Death Trail (1870). Other adventure genres, such as pirate tales and trapper adventures, also appeared frequently. After the civil war, the focus of the novels turned to the wild west and the detective genres.

Later in 1860, after The Home ceased publication, Erastus became a partner in his brother’s firm, and the name changed to Beadle and Co. The next year, the firm created Beadle’s American Library in London, reprinting several Beadle’s Dime Novel stories for the British public, an endeavor that lasted for five years. Back in the United States, the Civil War had begun; its effects initially slowed the formerly bi-monthly publication rate of the dime novels, but their popularity with the union troops eventually greatly increased their publication numbers.

In 1862, Erastus Beadle and Robert Adams bought out Irwin’s share of Beadle and Co. The firm would become known as Beadle and Adams in 1870, and it would also issue publications under the subsidiary names of Frank Starr and Co., Adams, Victor and Co., and Adams and Co. Even though Robert Adams died early in 1866, the Adams name would remain in the firm. His two brothers, David and William, became partners in the company after Robert’s death. Irwin would continue to attempt to publish dime novels, but his efforts never came anywhere close to rivaling his brother’s, and he abandoned any publishing efforts altogether in 1868. The house of Beadle and Adams went on to publish thirty-one more novel series, many of them reprints of earlier publication. The longest running series, Beadle’s New York Dime Library, outlived all of the firm’s members, appearing from 1878 to 1905. Most of the stories remained true to the adventure formulas, although some series, like the Waverley Library, tried to appeal to a different audience with stories of romance, society, and intrigue, many of them reprints of British authors like George Eliot, Antony Trollope, and Sheridan Le Fanu. Other series, like The Sunnyside Library and The Fireside Library, reprinted popular and literary British fiction.

Beadle and Adams also continued to publish periodicals, and two of their magazines achieved some measure of success. The Saturday Journal, a biweekly magazine, ran from 1870 to 1882; it was replaced in 1882 by Beadle’s Weekly, later known as Banner Weekly, which appeared until 1897. These magazines were primarily story papers, although they also included advice columns and hunting, fishing, and trapping sections. Under his different firms, Erastus Beadle also continued to publish dime books on various non-fictional subjects, including biographies, joke books, civil war information, and many topics of the sort that Irwin Beadle published in the 1860s.

Erastus Beadle did not outlive his firm. With the house’s publication rate declining and his health failing, he withdrew from the company completely and retired to Cooperstown in 1889 for good, where he remained until his death on December 18, 1894. David Adams had died in 1886, and his brother William would die in 1897. That same year, Orville J. Victor retired from his twenty-eight year position as Beadle editor, and William Adams’ executors disposed of the remaining publications: the Beadle Dime and Half Dime Novels were sold to another publisher, and the Banner Weekly was discontinued.

Johannsen, Albert. The House of Beadle and Adams and its Nickel and Dime Novels . 3 vols. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950; 1962.

From the guide to the Beadle and Adams archives, 1848–1921, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)