The Dancing Star by J. H. Ingraham
Price: $3.50
ePublished by
August 2023
Originally published 1857
Dime novel, Age of Sail
Author: J. H. Ingraham
ePublished by
August 2023
Originally published 1857
Dime novel, Age of Sail
Author: J. H. Ingraham
A wealthy young man who seems to have been a bad seed since birth, eventually losing his father’s respect and his inheritance, while he is a wanted man falls in with a more experienced criminal and agrees to become employed as a smuggler and pirate. He is opposed by two good men, both sailors, plus a driven lawman less black and white in character, who is chasing him and who has his own story (that does not end well).
And of course there is much sailing involved... as should be the case with all novels.
The Dancing Star; or, The Smuggler of the Chesapeake: A Story of the Coast and Sea was the sixth entry in The Weekly Novelette series published by M. M. Ballou in Boston, Massachusetts; each member of the series being published in four issues over the course of four weeks. Each issue was priced at ten cents, technically making these “dime novels” supposedly, even though it would cost the reader forty cents to read the entirety. And in addition to that contradiction, at more than 66,000 words The Dancing Star is definitely a full-sized novel in length, not a novelette.
And of course there is much sailing involved... as should be the case with all novels.
The Dancing Star; or, The Smuggler of the Chesapeake: A Story of the Coast and Sea was the sixth entry in The Weekly Novelette series published by M. M. Ballou in Boston, Massachusetts; each member of the series being published in four issues over the course of four weeks. Each issue was priced at ten cents, technically making these “dime novels” supposedly, even though it would cost the reader forty cents to read the entirety. And in addition to that contradiction, at more than 66,000 words The Dancing Star is definitely a full-sized novel in length, not a novelette.