Frank Leslie’s Budget: Railroad Literature for Women (1892)

Item Details

Two issues bound as one of Frank Leslie’s Budget, marketed as “The Best Railroad Reading” and packed with sensational engravings and serialized fiction aimed at popular audiences. Copyright 1892. With a vivid chromolithographic frontispiece of an exoticized woman and arresting narrative wood engravings throughout—highlighting themes of female peril, resistance, and melodrama—from Indigenous heroines to cliff-hung rescues and domestic conflicts. Approx. 96 pp. each issue. Spine chipped; wrappers worn a bit but holding; contents generally clean with minimal foxing or wear. A striking survival of mass-market publishing and visual storytelling from the late 19th century.

Related topics: women’s studies, book arts, illustrated periodicals, chromolithography, serialized fiction, 19th-century publishing, dime novels, railroad literature, visual culture, melodrama, Frank Leslie, pulp illustration, frontier romance, mass media history.

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