-----Original Message----- From: "E.Borgers" <
webeurop@yahoo.fr>
> I'm interested to know some basics about the
DEADWOOD DICK series, like:
> -author?- was it a multi-pen work?
> -period of publication (I guess it started not very
long after the 1870s)?
> -approx. how long was it published (seems to have
been very popular at
the time)
The Deadwood Dick stories were written by Edward L. Wheeler
(1854/5-1885?), a veteran writer of dime novels. There were
thirty-three Deadwood Dick stories in the dime novel BEADLE'S
HALF-DIME LIBRARY, from 1877 to 1885. A 34th story appeared
in BEADLE'S BOYS LIBRARY OF SPORT, STORY, AND ADVENTURE in
1882.
The stories were indeed very popular. Dick was the first
masked outlaw of dime novel fiction, and his name had
topicality going for it. More than that, however, was the
thematic subtext of the series. Actually, I'll beg the list's
indulgence and simply quote at length from my book:
"During the 19th century, American stories about the Western
frontier go through distinct historical stages. Before the
1840s the stories were usually about the creation of a white
community through the defeat of the natives (see: Hawkeye,
Nick of the Woods). Between the 1840s and the 1870s stories
set on the frontier were about the defense of white
community. However, those threatening the community included
not just natives or Mexicans, but also corrupt and wicked
bankers and businessmen. Both the authors and readers of
these stories were urbanites, and frontier stories which
featured evil financiers and merciless businessmen, both
negative aspects of the contemporary urban experience, can be
seen as the displacement of city problems into a frontier
setting in which the problems can be fictionally resolved in
a way the audience will find satisfactory. The heroes of such
stories were defenders of the status quo, defeating evil
businessmen but allowing other, presumably good businessmen
to take their place. The implicit message of these stories
was that problems like heartless bankers were anomalies which
were easily solved, and that the status quo ante was The Way
Things Should Be-that the problem was not the system, but the
lone individual. This pattern can also be seen in popular
fiction crime stories set in the city.
"This changed in the mid-1870s. The 1870s saw the conflict
between workers and management turn vicious, with strikes by
Pennsylvania coal miners in 1873 and 1874 and by railway
workers in 1877, both of which led to violent and bloody
repressions by management. Labor conflicts in the
Reconstruction South were even more charged, tied in as they
were with ongoing racial and political conflicts. Relations
between labor and capital were extremely bitter. Conservative
defenders of the establishment used newspapers to claim that
criminals like Frank and Jesse James (see: James Brothers)
were caused by labor unrest, while liberal newspapers
portrayed criminals as heroes of folklore, with the James
brothers specifically compared to Robin Hood's men.
"This was the backdrop set for the rise of the outlaw hero in
popular American fiction in the mid-1870s. Characters like
Deadwood Dick and the James brothers remained outlaws, but
they were made into versions of the räuberroman (see: The
Räuberroman) hero. The cause of their outlawry was corrupt
businessmen who had the support of the law. The outlaw heroes
no longer preyed on the average inhabitant of the frontier.
The victims of their robberies were members of the upper
classes, usually Eastern, and when communities were
threatened, the identity of the community was defined as
working class, and the enemies of the community were
exploitive capitalists like stockbrokers and financiers who
were evil not through what they did but through what they
were. Officials who represented business and the financial
establishment were automatically corrupt and automatically
the enemy of the outlaw hero, who fought them but defended
the poor and the working class.
"Deadwood Dick and the James brothers were the two most
popular outlaw characters to appear in the dime novels in the
1870s and 1880s. Led by these two, the outlaw hero character
became so successful so quickly that the dominant narrative
model for the dime novel Western changed after 1875, from
James Fenimore Cooper-like stories to those of the outlaw
hero. Deadwood Dick began as a version of the traditional
frontier hero, similar to Kit Carson or Hawkeye. At this
stage he is often pursued by "regulators" (see: Assowaum)
who, knowingly or not, do the bidding of a wealthy villain.
In later stories Dick becomes a vigilante himself, defending
the community against outsiders who represented the evil
Eastern moneyed interests.
"The enemies of Deadwood Dick during these years were
representatives of capital: business managers, bankers,
stockbrokers, industrial capitalists, and financiers. They
are almost uniformly Eastern, well-dressed, corrupt, and
effete. Indians and Mexicans, when they appear, are not the
primary villain and are often allies of Dick and his friends.
Dick's allies are the workers, farmers, artisans, and
shopkeepers. In one story Dick helps striking miners defy a
large corporation which is trying to crush them. The miners
explicitly link themselves with the striking Pennsylvania
coal miners. In another story Dick leads a miners' union,
helps win fair wages for the workers and defeats a
"communistic" labor organization. The communities he defends
are agrarian, rural, and opposed to the sort of modernization
that earlier frontier heroes like Hawkeye and Nick of the
Woods had promoted.
"This story pattern continued in both the Deadwood Dick and
James brothers stories until 1883. The popularity of the
outlaw hero stories led to what has been called a "moral
panic" on the part of the establishment, including numerous
alarmist articles in the Eastern press, and so in 1883 the
Postmaster General, Walter Gresham, ordered the cancellation
of the Wide Awake Library, which published the Frank and
Jesse James stories. This action caused the dime novel
publishers to change the content of the outlaw stories.
Deadwood Dick became a more conventional detective, pardoned
and reconciled with society. His enemies are still often
members of the upper class, but Dick became solidly
entrenched in the middle class, and labor issues and his
sympathies for the producing classes (as opposed to the
profiting classes) vanished from the series."
> -central character: was he a historical figure, or
based on one, or just
a fictional one?
No, he was purely fictional.
>From what you know of the TV serial, could this dime
novels series
have had some influence on the scripts of "Deadwood" the TV
series ?
(not sure this last question makes sense).
I doubt it. Leaving aside the availability of the stories, I
don't see much thematic similarity between "Deadwood" and the
Deadwood Dick stories; in the tv Deadwood the corruption (in
the form of Swearingen) is as much a part of Deadwood as are
the better citizens, while in the Deadwood Dick stories the
corruption and evil is nearly always external.
> Your book on Victoriana seems very interesting. Is
it an anthology of
texts from that period, or a wider study on the
subject?
Thanks! It's a combination of literary criticism and book
review of around 800 characters and two dozen concepts of
19th century fiction (although I go back to 1765 and up to
1905), from science fiction to fantasy to horror to
detective/mystery fiction to historical romances to dime
novels to penny dreadfuls to Gothics, as well as things like
the work of Ponson du Terrail and Paul Feval, Russian bandit
ballads, kabuki, wuxia, and Vietnamese epic poetry.
With regard to detective fiction, I discuss, in various
character and concept entries, the evolution of the figure of
the male detective, the evolution of the fictional female
detective, and the 19th century precursors to modern
hardboiled fiction. There are over 80 detective characters
covered, American British, French, German, and Chinese. I
think even experts will be surprised at some of the things
I've uncovered, esp. in the Lady Detectives entry.
The publisher's site for the book is here:
http://www.monkeybrainbooks.com/Fantastic_Victoriana.html
jess
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