Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 81

This is the inaugural issue of The Human Tiger, a serialized novel by Albert W. Aiken published by Beadle & Adams on November 19, 1879. The story follows Bertrand Tasnor, a man of mixed French-Creole and Yankee heritage whose checkered life includes service as a Confederate cavalry captain and, most recently, as "Captain Death," leader of road agents robbing mail coaches between Cheyenne and Denver. Now reduced to poverty in Chicago with a single dollar, Tasnor reflects on his violent past—a fatal duel as a lawyer, a marriage to a "tiger-angel" wife he may have killed, and an estranged child. Simultaneously, the narrative introduces Edmund Kelford, a wealthy young Chicago architect lovestruck over a poor dressmaker's apprentice named at the shop of Mrs. Jones, observed through her window. Kelford's friend Wirt Middough returns from the East and discovers his companion's infatuation.