he class that was supposedly reading them, the authors themselves were not from the working class. In fact, the dime novel was a commercial product of a burgeoning industry employing relatively educated professionals--writers who also worked as journalists, teachers, or clerks (45). The judgments passed on those reading the dime novels was limited to the working class; but the very material that was thought to be immoral was invented in the minds of middle class people. In addition, while the working class may have been the target audience, perhaps in an attempt to redefine class boundaries, in actuality, the population of dime novel readers transcended those very boundaries. The action- and romance-packed stories appealed to all: men, women, children, both young and old. For people such as bankers and capitalists, dime novels served as more of a distraction from the North/South divide that the country was actually experiencing (Reading the West, 32)If the popularity of these novels was so widespread, even extending into middle-class interests, one must wonder why the reaction by literary critics and other middle-class people was so strong, and at times, excessive. Critics were unsure of how dime novels would impact the working class readers and what action, if any, they might provoke. Either they were a narcotic escape from daily life with no genuine symbolic meaning or, with Comstock, a symbolic universe so potents as to erase the real world from the minds of readers, leading them to act out the scenes depicted in dime novels (54). Anthony Comstock was the leader of these latter believers, calling editors of such fiction Satans efficient agents who would ultimately destroy the young (Denning, 51). He eventually began arresting people who sold these novels or those who allowed children under sixteen years of age to have access to dime novels. Libraries joined in on the censorship, attempting to keep sensational fiction off th...
