“Draw, Old Chap”
Pulp Westerns in Piccadilly.
By: James C. Work 08/01/2009
At this moment, on Clerkenwell Green in London, England, a lean cowboy with steel-blue eyes loosens his Colt’s revolver in its holster and pushes through the batwing saloon doors looking for a shot of redeye and the outlaw who shot his partner. He’s a character in a pulp Western novel, a much-maligned fiction genre which is still alive and well, thank you, in the heart of Great Britain.
One early successful Western was Owen Wister’s The Virginian, published in 1902. It was the first Western to sell more than a million copies. Wister termed it “colonial” because he saw Wyoming Territory as a colony of New England, and “romance” because it is based on “action and episode.” He viewed the American cowboy as “the last romantic figure upon our soil.”
The Western is descended from the historical romance, popularized in 1814 by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Kenilworth and other novels in his Waverly series. Before Owen Wister, Fenimore Cooper romanticized New England’s northwest frontier in The Pioneers, The Prairie and The Last of the Mohicans.
Novels in the early 19th century were found in upper class home libraries. They were thick, large and bound in durable cloth or leather, and they were heavy. All of this made the novels expensive to manufacture and expensive to ship. Then the Beadle brothers entered the picture.
The Beadles published the first “dime novels” in 1860. These were skinny and flimsy, printed in small, often blurry type on cheap pulp paper. They looked more like what we’d call a leaflet.
But they were cheap, and they were portable. They offered passengers riding on stagecoaches or on the railroad something to read other than newspapers. Dime novels could fit into a purse or pocket and if left on the seat by mistake, they were no big loss.
Move ahead to 1869 when a flamboyant individual named Edward Zone Carroll Judson began selling romantic stories under the pen name of “Ned Buntline.” His first dime novel featured the exploits of “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
Buntline’s novels spawned a whole pack of books known variously as “dime Westerns,” “paperbacks” and “pulp Westerns.” Anyone with 10 cents to spend could thrill to the improbable adventures of Buffalo Bill, Deadwood Dick or Denver Dan the Road Sport. Or if readers preferred a heroine, they enjoyed the exploits of Daisy Dare and Lariat Lil.
Sales of Beadle-style dime thrillers started to decline around 1890, but by then a slightly thicker version had been born. Throughout two World Wars and a Depression, the pocket Western flourished. Publishers like Ace, Bantam, Dell and Pocket Books kept them coming. You could find them in soldier’s packs, sailors’ duffel bags and lunchboxes of working stiffs.
Many of the cheap paperback Westerns were written under pen names. Some were by Frederick Glidden, writing as Luke Short. You could buy Ramrod or Raw Land in 1943 for 25 cents. Or a book by Joseph Ernest Nephtal Dufault, who wrote more than 20 Westerns, including Smoky the Cow Horse, under his pen name Will James. Another author whose books found their way into saddlebags and overall pockets was Frederick Faust, who lived to see Destry Rides Again made into one of them newfangled movin’ pictures. He was Max Brand, of course.
It’s tempting to say that pocket Westerns have gone the way of the butter churn, never to be seen again. The old books themselves are falling to dust as the acidic wood pulp paper succumbs to atmospheric chemistry. Where are the short, fast-moving Westerns you can carry in your coat pocket? Where are the authors with colorful pen names, authors who turn out four or five titles per year?
Comments (3)
Enjoyed reading this article, I've been a fan of Black Horse Westerns for years. The books are very nicely produced and are generally fast, action packed, reads.
I've reviewed lots of them on my site:
http://westernfictionreview.blogspot....
Steve M
Excellent overview of a much-admired and -loved publisher. My first book was accepted by Mr Hale and I've now had seven published (3 westerns) so he definitely brought me luck! The turnaround from receipt of a manuscript to a decision is phenomenal, too - usually about a week, which has to be the best in the industry. I'm a Brit but live in Spain, not far from the movie badlands in Almeria!
Nik (Ross Morton)
Many thanks for spreading the word about Black Horse Westerns. To your list of countries that are homes to BHW writers you can add Spain and New Zealand. And pocket-book paperbacks of the kind you mention just might make a comeback yet. The Black Horse Extra ezine has just embarked on a trial venture you can read about at www.blackhorsewesterns.com
More briefly, it's mentioned here:
http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/...
Best regards
Chap O'Keefe
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