Haverford Libraries’ Dime Novel Collection includes a complete set of the 100 volumes of Beadle’s Frontier Series, which were originally published from the 1860s to the 1880s and were purchased, in part, to honor Emeritus Professor of History Emma Lapsansky-Werner on her retirement.
"In the Collection" highlights some of the rare and marvelous items that are part of Magill Library's Special Collections.
Lapsansky-Werner has used the novels to teach her writing seminar “The American West in Fact and Fiction.” Librarian of the College Terry Snyder has also used them in her “Materiality and Spectacle” class, and Sarah Horowitz, curator of rare books and manuscripts and head of Quaker and Special Collections, uses them with classes looking at book history and technology, as an example of mass-produced, inexpensive books. Photo: Dan Z. Johnson.