The Popular Magazine
The Popular Magazine was an American pulp magazine from New York City , which was published by Street & Smith from November 1903 to October 1931 in 612 issues. The magazine contained short stories , novellas , serialized larger works and even entire short novels . The theme of the magazine spanned a variety of genres, but tended largely towards adventure stories for men. This was especially true in the later years, when the trend towards hardboiled stories was strong. Popular Magazine rated itself "a magazine for men and women who like to read about men".
Edition history
The Popular Magazine was published by Street & Smith and edited by Henry Harrison Lewis from 1903 to 1904 and by Charles Agnew MacLean from 1904 to 1928 . It appeared monthly from November 1903, every six months from October 1, 1909, then weekly from September 24, 1927, again every six months from July 7, 1928 and monthly from February to September 1931. In October 1931, The Popular Magazine with Complete Stories , too by Street & Smith, merged and thus discontinued.
The Popular Magazine started out as a magazine for boys, but after just three issues the editorial focus shifted to mainstream adult stories. It was thus that one of the first magazines to compete with The Argosy by Frank A. Munsey appeared. It was printed on cellulose paper and, like other pulp magazines, can be regarded as the forerunner of the “pulp fiction” magazines that were popular in the 1920s to 1950s. Like these, it was sold at a bargain price to help spread stories "for the common man". Several issues of The Popular Magazine featured illustrations by NC Wyeth .
One of the magazine's first successes was the publication of H. Rider Haggard's novel She, Ayesha: The Return of She in January to August 1905, which also appeared in the British magazine The Windsor Magazine , but was not completed there until later. Other well-known authors published in issues of The Popular Magazine include Morgan Robertson , HG Wells , Rafael Sabatini , Zane Gray , Beatrice Grimshaw , Elmer Brown Mason , James Francis Dwyer, and William Wallace Cook . The Popular Magazine also published Craig Kennedy stories of Arthur B. Reeve and other mysteries of Frederick William Davis and Lemuel De Bra and espionage stories of E. Phillips Oppenheim and George Bronson-Howard . MacLean stated in a 1910 editorial that he did not want Popular Magazine to publish "Stories about the Absolutely Impossible", but Popular Magazine also included science fiction and fantasy stories by Edwin Balmer , John Buchan , John Collier , Roy Norton , Sax Rohmer , Fred MacIsaac , George Sterling and Edgar Wallace .
The name of the magazine was changed slightly several times towards the end of its publication: in December 1927 it became Popular Stories and a month later it became The Popular . In October 1928 the name was changed back to The Popular Magazine . There was a marked change in writers around 1930 and the Street & Smith publishing house admitted in correspondence with one of its writers at the time that it had been decided to "focus on material of faster and cheaper quality".
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d Mike Ashley, John Eggeling: Popular Magazine, The In: John Clute, Peter Nicholls (Eds.): The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction , April 3, 2015; accessed on March 27, 2019.
- ^ The Popular Magazine in The Pulp Magazines Project ; accessed on March 27, 2019.
- ^ A b "Horror literature before Lovecraft." In: Leslie S. Klinger : HP Lovecraft - The work. Translation by Andreas Fliedner and Alexander Pechmann, original title The New Annotated HP Lovecraft . Fischer TOR, Frankfurt / Main 2017; P. 29. ISBN 978-3-596-03708-7 .
Web links
- The Popular Magazine in The Pulp Magazines Project
- Issues in The Pulp Magazines Project
- Mike Ashley, John Eggeling: Popular Magazine, The In: John Clute, Peter Nicholls (Eds.): The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction , April 3, 2015; accessed on March 27, 2019.