Feeding the Public Hysteria
Dime novel publishers such as T. R. Dawley were better positioned than traditional publishing houses to quickly produce titles related to topical news events. Dion Hasco’s J. Wilkes Booth, The Assassinator of President Lincoln was widely sold in Northern cities just a few weeks following Booth’s death at the Garrett Farm in Virginia on April 26, 1865. While presumably a fictionalized account of the assassination (it was issued as part of Dawley’s New War Novels), it was among the popular works that cultivated public perceptions that the Lincoln assassination was orchestrated at the highest levels of the Confederate government.
Dime novel publishers such as T. R. Dawley were better positioned than traditional publishing houses to quickly produce titles related to topical news events. Dion Hasco’s <em>J. Wilkes Booth, The Assassinator of President Lincoln</em> was widely sold in Northern cities just a few weeks following Booth’s death at the Garrett Farm in Virginia on April 26, 1865. While presumably a fictionalized account of the assassination (it was issued as part of Dawley’s New War Novels), it was among the popular works that cultivated public perceptions that the Lincoln assassination was orchestrated at the highest levels of the Confederate government.