We recently received a shipment of international dime novels from a seller in The Netherlands. We are now the proud owners of dime novels in Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, as well as a smaller number of titles in Polish and Swedish.

“Texas Jack” titles in several languages.

Most of the covers are full of vibrant colors depicting graphic scenes of mischief and mayhem. Many of the illustrations are quite violent and full of the racism that was common at the time these were published. One title in Spanish has already been digitized and is now viewable online: Un hechicero infernal (in English: “An infernal sorcerer”). We will, of course, be digitizing more over time.

A selection of international dime novels.

As we prepare to catalog these titles, we are requesting help in translating some of the information about them. We’re not looking for full-text translations, but rather translations of the basic information such as the title and some possible subjects. To facilitate this crowdsourcing endeavor, we will be posting images of the front covers and/or title pages of these works on our Flickr account. Keep an eye out for more info here on the blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, or on the above-mentioned Flickr account. (If you would like to be notified by email when these images are added to Flickr, please send an email to digitallibrary@villanova.edu and include which language(s) you read.)