ABSTRACT
A Story of Labor and Capital and many other sensational stories, replied to the many attacks of the sort on "immoral" dime novels, writing: It is only the cheap stories, for which the demand is, and always will be inexhaustible, and which must be depended on for the regeneration of American literature. This chapter addresses the following questions: the problem of escape, or, what does it mean to say that this is escapist fiction? The problem of genre and cultural history, or how do you sort out the tens of thousands of cheap stories? For the most part, the consideration of the function and meaning of dime novels, and popular fiction generally, can be summed up in one category - escape. The theorists of an escapist culture give themselves away when they characterize escapist or sensational fiction as dreams, daydreams, and wish fulfillments. The allegorical reading is a characteristically working class way of reading in the late nineteenth century.
