HURRICANE NELL, THE GIRL DEAD-SHOT (1877) – Written by Edward L. Wheeler. This blog post is dedicated to the prolific author and fellow blogger Jacqui Murray from WordDreams here at WP. Her blog is ideal for blogging tips, information on her latest book releases and much more. Jacqui had expressed interest in Dime Novel heroes and heroines for my Frontierado Holiday coverage this year, so here is the first of many more posts I will make about these often forgotten characters.
In general, the Dime Novel period of westerns, detective, science fiction and horror tales lasted from 1860 to around 1919 or the early 1920s. Pulp magazines took over from there. Many Dime Novels were very loosely based on real-life figures like Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane and others. Many more were purely fictional.
That brings us back to Hurricane Nell, the Girl Dead-Shot, also known as Hurricane Nell, the Queen of the Saddle and Lasso, and, in a misleading re-titling, as Bob Woolf, the Border Ruffian. (NOT three separate books.) Though published in May of 1877, Nell’s adventures were set earlier in the 1800s than most of the other big-name heroines of Dime Novels, so I am starting with her and will move on to the others in the next few weeks.
Hurricane Nell started life as Nelly Allen, and was around 13 years old when Bob Woolf and his gang of Missouri outlaws set fire to her family’s home in Kansas intent on murdering her parents (who were already dead of small pox anyway). In typical pulp fiction fashion, Nelly vowed to get revenge on the men who burned her home. Continue reading
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