From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   John Hoagland wrote:   
      
   > What kind of literature might be available for someone who could read   
   > in the "Wild West" in some of the old mining towns? Put another way,   
   > if Doc Holliday had a bookshelf, what might be on it?   
      
   Having done a little reading on the matter, I can tell you that you   
   won't have heard of most of the popular books of the 19th century. A   
   good many of what we imagine to have been wildly popular works only   
   appear that way in retrospect. They've become recognized as advancements   
   in style and theme, but they weren't necessarily to be found on every   
   bookshelf 125 years ago. Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter just weren't   
   that popular.   
      
   Sensational books, then as now, did well. I suspect that in a fairly   
   remote mining town, one might find anything, whatever made its way to   
   town being accepted and welcomed. The Wide Wide World was a a preachy   
   domestic novel appealing, but it is sometimes credited with being the   
   first "bestseller".   
      
   It turns out to be difficult to say which books were really popular.   
   Some books are mentioned as being read by characters in novels, which   
   gives some idea, at least within the class being portrayed. Collections   
   of writings of several authors are presumed to have been popular. Poetry   
   was found more commonly then than in these electronic enterainment days.   
   The penny dreadful and dime novels were hot and cheap.   
      
   As to Doc Holiday, I suspect The Police Gazette was more to his taste.   
   He might have had one or two of Greene Vardiman Black's dentistry texts,   
   but I suspect he didn't wear it out through constant study.   
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)