A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1886 — all 16 pages of painted-cover fiction magazines that launched science fiction, horror, and hardboiled crime, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.

Home › Exhibition › Pulp Fiction › Read

A complete issue · 16 pages · 1886

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448

1886 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 3 of 16 — 3 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 4 of 16 — 4 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 5 of 16 — 5 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 6 of 16 — 6 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 7 of 16 — 7 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 8 of 16 — 8 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 9 of 16 — 9 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 10 of 16 — 10 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 11 of 16 — 11 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 12 of 16 — 12 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 13 of 16 — 13 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 14 of 16 — 14 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 15 of 16 — 15 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 448 — page 16 of 16 — 16 / 16

About this issue

This is the opening chapter of "Nickel-Plate Ned" by Edward L. Wheeler, from Beadle and Adams' Fifteenth Edition weekly, February 23, 1886. The story is set in Bozeman, Montana, where Ned Neville, a young cashier at banker Maurice Mansfield's bank, converses with Mansfield's seventeen-year-old daughter Mabel in the family parlor. Neville, harboring a mysterious past, attempts to end their acquaintance to protect her reputation. When Mansfield enters, he confronts Neville about a two-thousand-dollar cash shortage in the bank's accounts and reveals rumors questioning the propriety of Neville and Mabel's friendship. The confrontation escalates when Mansfield, enraged at both the missing funds and the supposed scandal, denounces Neville's presence in Bozeman and blames him for compromising his daughter's name.

Browse this issue page by page

Each page has its own page — the cartoon, who’s in it, and what the satire means.