A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1878 — all 16 pages of painted-cover fiction magazines that launched science fiction, horror, and hardboiled crime, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.

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A complete issue · 16 pages · 1878

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 36

1878 · Free to read

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About this issue

"The Boy Clown; or, The Queen of the Arena" (Chapter I-II) This Beadle's Half-Dime Library serial, copyrighted 1878, opens in the village of Frenchville, where Copenhagen's Mammoth Circus arrives amid excitement. Fourteen-year-old Henry Needhurst, circus-born (performing as Henri De La Forest), is a renowned trapeze performer. A disgruntled worker named Murker, angry at being reported for drunkenness, sabotages Henry's apparatus by nearly severing a supporting rope. During the evening performance, the rope snaps mid-act, hurling Henry from the trapeze to the ground. The second chapter shifts focus: Murker, fleeing, finds refuge in a cabin where a beautiful fourteen-year-old girl named Jessie lives with her deaf grandmother. Recognizing Jessie's exceptional singing voice, Murker immediately plots to exploit her for profit and personal gain, exploiting the grandmother's financial desperation.

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Each page has its own page — the cartoon, who’s in it, and what the satire means.