Book Description

The era of pulp magazine extended from about 1896 to about 1957. The pulp magazines dealt in fiction that was, by reason of audience and the medium, heightened beyond normal experience. The drama was intensive, colors vivid, pace exhausting. The characters moving through these prose dreams were heightened, too. Most were cast in quasi-heroic mold and moved on elevated planes of accomplishment. Sixty years of fiction-making created immense numbers of characters. Most glimmered briefly and vanished. After them crowded others, equally ephemeral. Certain characters rose above their casual origins. Various factors brought them intense popularity. This book, and its companion volumes, are concerned with the slow boiling and shaping of many literary conventions over many decades. This volume will begin with dime novels and several early series characters who influenced the direction of pulp fiction at its source. Later volumes will be concerned with the 'teens and 'twenties, examining characters that have played distinctive parts in the history of pulp fiction.