Before Blake Madison, There Was....

Subject: Before Blake Madison, There Was....
From: wysiwyg
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 03:33 PM

... the dime novel.

DIME NOVEL art and archives.

In 1855, when Francis Scott Street and Francis Shubael Smith bought The New York Weekly Dispatch, Street & Smith embarked on a publishing mission that remained remarkably prolific and profitable for over one hundred years. Street & Smith rapidly became a "fiction factory," producing a wide variety of popular literature, including dime novels, pulp magazines, books in series for juveniles, fashion and homemaking magazines, comics, and adventure stories. The company viewed fiction as a commodity, with Street & Smith editors dictating plots, character types, and other conventions to the firm's stable of writers. As a result, Street & Smith authors, including such literary figures as Horatio Alger, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, and Jack London were often disguised by house pseudonyms and wrote to carefully calculated formulae, with their respective products subject to extensive rewriting by Street & Smith editors.

Street & Smith illustrators worked under the same editorial constraints as did the writers. If an editor received unacceptable illustrations, the illustrator was told to "get busy and change them then and there." Nevertheless, Street & Smith eventually became "an incubator where the greatest illustrators in the country were professionally born." These included Harvey Dunn, Joseph Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, Winfield Scott, Tom Lovell, Anton Otto Fisher, Amos Sewell, and N.C. Wyeth....

~S~

Subject: RE: Before Blake Madison, There Was....
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 02:54 PM

This was that rarest of things, a thread that never got one single response from anyone....astonishing!

It has languished unresponded to since 6th April/02. I just discovered it by accident while trying to track down the original Black Madison story.

How about that?

What was the title of the original Blake Madison story?

Subject: RE: Before Blake Madison, There Was....
From: Alice
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 03:39 PM

I think I have it traced. I'll link if I do.

Subject: RE: Before Blake Madison, There Was....
From: Alice
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 03:46 PM

Refreshed the Return of Blake Madison... still can't find the first one.
Return was in 1999.

Subject: RE: Before Blake Madison, There Was....
From: Alice
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 04:01 PM

First was called "True Detective Stories".
Refreshed it... it is down in BS.
Click here

Subject: RE: Before Blake Madison, There Was....
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 04:16 PM

Okay, great. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Before Blake Madison, There Was....
From: Alice
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 04:19 PM

I had a great time re-reading most of that first thread. I'd forgotten what a fun trip Mudcat was back then!