NIU Digital Library

This blog features materials from the Northern Illinois University Digital Library. Collections include Nickels and Dimes, the Southeast Asia Digital Library, Lincoln/Net, Mark Twain's Mississippi, and materials from Rare Books & Special Collections and the Regional History Center and University Archives. To browse all of our collections, visit: http://digital.lib.niu.edu

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Buffalo Bill and the Skeleton Horseman, or, Teton John, the Half-Blood | New Buffalo Bill Weekly | Nickels and Dimes

From page 8:

“You won’t believe it, likely; but thet thar critter is ther road agent that’s called round hyar ther Skeleton Horseman.”

“What? You don’t mean it!”

“Never meant anything more’n I do thet, Buffer. Ye see, I had a good chanst. When he lay thar on his back in the dust, his coat and shirt had fell open, and thar on his breast war painted white ribs, jes’ like  ther ribs of a skeleton.”

Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!

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Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director

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The Prison Demon, or, The Ghost of Dr. Quartz (1904) | New Nick Carter Weekly | Nickels and Dimes

Villainous Dr. Quartz is Nick Carter’s Moriarty, with his own cadre of henches and pupils in the criminal arts. This story also features his best hench, Zanoni, the Woman Wizard.

From page 6:

“What sort of news had been rapped to Coon?”

“That there was a ghost in the prison--the ghost of the devil, in fact. It darted along the galleries like a sprite. It passed  through the bars from one cell to another as if there were no bars there at all. It hopped off of the rail of one gallery down to another, twelve feet below it, like a bird. It danced can-cans behind the backs of the guards without their having the least idea that it was near them, and darted away out of sight if they happened to turn to look where it was, or where it had been.”

Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!

(More about this collection)

Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director

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January 04, 1873 | The Saturday Weekly Journal | Nickels and Dimes

It’s a rare treat in the dime novels to have so explicit a proper monster. Today please enjoy a dragon from the story papers! 

From page 2:

What next? The adventurer asked himself the question; then, holding his torch above his head, he peered forward into the gloom.

He started violently. His eyes fell upon something that started out from the gloom toward him--something that sen the blood in icy currents through his veins.

It was an animal--a huge monster, not until the hooded serpent, with the rough, scaly folds of a fish. The great angular head, with its dark cowl, its open jaws, and long, yellow tusks, was thrust upward almost to the top of the cavern. It stood in the middle of the passage, as if to dispute the further intrusion of the adventurer within the silent precincts of the that ancient tomb.

The stranger had no desire to advance closer to the monstrous creature, for, as the rays of his torch, wavering and flickering in the currents of air that was drawing through the cavern, fell across the scaly monster, they told him that it was aquiver with life!

Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!

(More about this collection)

Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director

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A `Crevasse’ on the Mississippi | Mark Twain’s Mississippi | NIU Digital Library

This image, found in William Cullen Bryant’s Picturesque America (1872) is another example of the work of Alfred R. Waud. In depicts a breach, or crevasse, in a levee bordering the Mississippi River, presumably during a time of flood or high water.

Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, Northern Illinois University Libraries

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Red Jacket, by Alfred R. Waud | Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project | NIU Digital Library

Chief Red-Jacket (1750-1830) was known as Otetiani in his youth and Sagoyewatha after 1780. He was a Native American from the Seneca tribe, and was chief of the Wolf clan. He earned the name Red-Jacket because of his fondness for an embroidered red coat given to him by the British for his wartime services. 

Illustration, dated 1872, by Alfred R. Waud

Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, NIU Libraries

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“The Battle of Antietam Fought September 17, 1862 -- General  Mansfield's Corps in Position in the Center” | Illinois During the Civil War | NIU Digital Library 

Another, panoramic view of part of the Battle of Antietam, by Alfred R. Waud.

Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, Northern Illinois University Libraries

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The Battle of Antietam--Burning of Mr. Mumma's House and Barns | Illinois During the Civil War | NIU Digital Library

The above image is another example of the work of the American illustrator Alfred R. Waud. It depicts a scene from the pivotal Battle of Antietam during the American Civil War. Fought on September 17, 1863 near Sharpsburg, Maryland, the battle cost over 23,000 lives but was itself indecisive. That result served to blunt a Confederate push into the north, however. Heartened by a favorable result after a run of lost battles, President Abraham Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, which he released on January 1, 1863. 

Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, NIU Libraries

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Magnolia Swamp, 1872 | Mark Twain’s Mississippi Project | NIU Digital Library

This sketch of a Magnolia Swamp somewhere in the United States’ southern states is the work of the artist Alfred R. Waud. Born in England in 1828, he immigrated to the United States in 1850. He rose to prominence as an illustrator for the New York Illustrated News and Harper’s Weekly Magazine during the American Civil War. These mass-circulation publications provided readers with vivid images of battle scenes and war conditions in the form of engravings.

Waud made sketches in the field, then sent them by courier to the publication’s home office, where engravers produced the plates used in the printing process.

Waud traveled with the United States’ Army of the Potomac between the end of 1861 and 1865′s Battle of Petersburg, Virginia.

After the war, Waud continued to work as an illustrator. The image above appears in Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In. A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes, Water-falls, Shores, Canons, Valleys, Cities, and other Picturesque Features of Our Country. With Illustrations on Steel and Wood, by Eminent American Artists. Volume 1 , edited by William Cullen Bryant (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1872).

Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, NIU Libraries

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A Tragedy of the Sea, or, Nick Carter's Desperate Fight (1905) | New Nick Carter Weekly | Nickels and Dimes

This Nick Carter adventure is a story of piracy and survival. It also features trained attack sharks, and several conversations about how to use sharks in the disposal of inconvenient evidence.

He had covered two-thirds of the distance and it only required a few minutes more to arrive at the land, when a shaowy substance darted past the two men in the water, and Nick saw a flash of white through the mists as the shark turned its belly upward to seize the prey it sought.

Hampered as he was, the detective knew that it would be impossible to put up a good fight against the monster of the deep, and so instead of turning to await its second attack, as he would have done had he been alone--for that would have been decidedly the safer method--he redoubled his exertions to gain the shallow water near the shore.

But he was not quick enough to escape the shark at that.

Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!

(More about this collection)

Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director

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Jack Harkaway Among the Savages (1895) | Five Cent Wide Awake Library | Nickels and Dimes

Jack Harkaway adventured to “exotic lands,” helping to propagate the idea of orientalist adventure, but also helped characterize a delight in travel and adventure. The “monsters” in this book are mostly the ones nature already provides, but in their biggest forms.

From page 25:

The growling increased in intensity.

Placing his mouth near the ground, the monster’s noise reverberated around until the dreadful roar could be heard for miles.

When the king of the forest is in a passion, every living thing is stricken with terror, even the birds ceased singing.

No sound broke the stillness of the air.

Presently the beast emerged from her cover, and Monday declared she could smell human flesh.

She was a magnificent tigress, about four years old, and Harvey could not help admiring her beautifully-marked skin, as she walked up and down under a tree, lashing her striped sides with her long tail, which she sometmies [sic] threw right over her back.

Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!

Content Warning: It is NIU Digital Library’s policy to display historical materials without editing their contents, in order to provide a clear picture of historical attitudes for research, scholarship, and comment. The attitudes depicted in these documents do not reflect the beliefs of NIU or its employees.

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Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director

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Rainbolt, the Ranger, or, The Aerial Demon of the Mountain (1871) | Beadle’s New Dime Novels | Nickels and Dimes

This Monster Monday, we feature a “spook of the hills”

From page 31:

Down in the valley from the north floated in the air high above the tree-tops--far above the reach and power of man, an awful figure--the figure of a human skeleton, its ghastly proportions revealed by the flame and smoke emitted from the great sunken eyes, the distended nostrils and wide, grinning mouth. Great white arms beat and buffeted the air like the wings of a struggling vampire, while scream after scream rent the air.

It was the Aerial Demon of the Mountain, the scourge of the Black Hills--the terror of the Indian.

Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!

(More about this collection)

Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director

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The Branded Hand, or, The Man of Mystery (1879) | Beadle’s Half Dime Library | Nickels and Dimes

I admit it. This is not... precisely monstrous. However, this issue of Beadle’s Dime Library has one of the most phenomenally peculiar covers. The hand is meant to be a “close up” of the hand to display the carved-in “A.” But it comes off as an enormous disembodied hand, and for that reason it gets featured for this Monster Monday.

Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!

(More about this collection)

Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director

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1948 Norther | Norther Yearbooks | NIU Digital Library

Show your spirit Huskies! 

It is National College Colors Day.

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Posted by Sarah Cain, Curator of Manuscripts

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1938 Norther | Norther Yearbooks | NIU Digital Library

Don't know much about geography

Don't know much trigonometry

Don't know much about algebra

Don't know what a slide rule is for                      

--  "Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke

Welcome back students!

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Posted by Sarah Cain, Curator of Manuscripts

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1922 Norther | Norther Yearbooks | NIU Digital Library

Welcome back students!

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Posted by Sarah Cain, Curator of Manuscripts

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1965 Norther | Norther Yearbooks | NIU Digital Library

Aeriel photograph of NIU campus around 1965. 

Welcome back students!

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Posted by Sarah Cain, Curator of Manuscripts

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Young Jack Harkaway and the Idols of Gold (1896) | Five Cent Wide Awake Library | Nickels and Dimes

The first monsters were of the natural world. Today we take a look enormous bird beasts!

From page 13:

“Fiend!” cried Jack. “You are unworthy of the name of man!”

“I can show no mercy to a Harkaway.”

“My friends will avenge this in a way you little expect.”

“They cannot reach us here.”

“Do not make too sure of that,” said Jack.

“Our giants will hurl them down the mountain side. We are secure here,” replied Hunston.

Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays! 

(More about this collection)

Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director