The pulp magazines dealt in fiction that was, by reason of the audience and the medium, heightened beyond normal experience. The drama was intense, the colors vivid, and the pace exhausting. The characters moving through these prose dreams were heightened, too. Most were cast in a quasi-heroic mold and moved on elevated planes of accomplishment.
    This book and its companion volumes are concerned with the slow shaping of many literary conventions over many decades. This volume begins the study with the dime novels and several early series characters who influenced the direction of pulp fiction at its source.