ABSTRACT
Both Theodore Dreiser and Frederic Merrill Van Rensselaer Dey, however, drew significant meaning from their real crime elements, replicating the larger sociopolitical concepts they found in the newspapers. Beyond the character's sheer popularity, the Nick Carter stories' significance in dime novel history comes from their prototypical relationship to broader developments in the detective genre. The later Nick Carter stories' avoidance of repeating newspaper facts may be as much a testament to Dey's creativity and composition speed as anything, but it is significant. Dreiser understood that newspapers and novels shaped the ways individuals perceived crime and, tellingly, he made his most direct statement regarding his novel's intent in a crime fiction magazine. In addressing an audience familiar with historical crime, Dreiser framed his essay with his own background in the media. He drew from news reports to build An American Tragedy during the same era when the Nick Carter novels moved further away from such methods.
