ABSTRACT
From 1896 to 1914, Frank Merriwell of Fardale Academy, Yale College and the world at large, performed unmatchable exploits on both the playing field and in everyday life on the pages of Tip Top Weekly, the most widely read nickel novel ever published. Merriwell represented virtually all of the qualities American readers might have wished to see embodied in a young man: truth, faith, justice, the triumph of right, friendship, loyalty, patriotism, duty, sacrifice, retribution, tolerance, honesty, modesty, and love of motherhood and the hearth fire.
