noun

• A cheap and typically sensational novel, with a yellow board or cloth binding.

  ‘There is some wear but generally this is a very good copy of a yellowback.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The volumes shown here are typical examples of Ward & Lock's early small format and later large format yellowbacks.’
  • ‘This is the first volume in what will be a multi-volume set devoted to a bibliography of over 25 publishers of Victorian yellowbacks and paperbacks.’
  • ‘This website celebrates this process with sections on printing technology, illustrations, lithography, wood engraving, the novel, yellowbacks, penny dreadfuls and children's books.’
  • ‘Being victims of their own success, many dime novels and yellowbacks are fragile or in poor repair.’

  Synonyms

  volume, tome, work, printed work, publication, title, opus, treatise