Italians and Italian Americans in 19th and 20th Century Dime Novels

Madeline Miller*, Michael DiBacco*, Lillian Wright*, Allison Groves*, and Dr. Nancy Caronia

Department of English, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26505

Presentation Category: Oral-Human Engagement (Oral Presentation #4)

Student’s Major: English, Spanish

Dime novels were a popular culture phenomenon of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The nickel and dime priced paperback, serial short stories captivated the working class of America; however, dime novels reign coincided with one of the largest immigration influxes as well. The novels were often published anonymously and almost solely in English, allowing the writers to depict and encourage many of the ethnic and racial tensions of the urban areas where they were consumed. Dime novels’ overarching genre was adventure with the main hero, mostly white men, employing many methods of subterfuge. This subterfuge all too often involved disguises that mocked and degraded ethnic and racial minorities. In the case of Italian Americans in dime novels, many of the disguises allow characters, as if by magic, to speak multiple dialects of Italian, know the whereabouts of every mafioso in town, and even fool their “fellow” Italians. In my portion of our research, I read dime novels published by Frank Tousey between 1889 and 1900 which was dominated by 154 issues of the Wide Awake Library series. The issues I read were outliers within our group’s overall research, with most of the issues following narratives of Italians in Italy; however, they provide better perspective on the American public’s views of Italians versus Italian Americans, specifically in contrast to the Nick Carter novels that Michael DiBacco read.

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) & accompanying HONR 297-level course,