Delaware Tom: Western Novel

Delaware Tom is a vigorous specimen of nineteenth-century American frontier fiction, centered on the perilous borderlands where scouts, settlers, Native peoples, and outlaws contend for survival and moral authority. Written in the brisk, episodic manner of the dime novel, it favors swift action, suspenseful pursuit, disguises, ambushes, and sharply drawn scenes of wilderness danger. Yet within its popular form it also reflects the era's literary fascination with the "Indian scout" and the contested mythology of the American frontier. Jos. E. Badger, commonly associated with the prolific world of post-Civil War popular adventure writing, helped shape the conventions of inexpensive serial and dime-novel literature. His work emerged from a publishing culture hungry for tales of expansion, danger, and national identity. Though not a frontier ethnographer, Badger drew upon the imaginative materials of his age: captivity narratives, pioneer legend, military conflict, and the romanticized figure of the border hero. Readers interested in early American popular fiction, Western romance, or the cultural history of frontier mythology will find Delaware Tom especially rewarding. It is best read both as an exciting adventure and as a revealing artifact of its time.

Pagina's: 64, Paperback, Sharp Ink