Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were
published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on
which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were
called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide
by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges.
The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature.
Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the
19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known
for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, even though this was but a small part
of what existed in the pulps. Successors of pulps include paperback books, digest magazines, and
men's adventure magazines. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considered
descendants of "hero pulps"; pulp magazines often featured illustrated novel-length stories of
heroic characters, such as Flash Gordon, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Phantom Detective.
History
Origins
The first "pulp" was Frank Munsey's revamped Argosy magazine of 1896, with about 135,000
words (192 pages) per issue, on pulp paper with untrimmed edges, and no illustrations, even on
the cover. The steam-powered printing press had been in widespread use for some time, enabling
the boom in dime novels; prior to Munsey, however, no one had combined cheap printing, cheap
paper and cheap authors in a package that provided affordable entertainment to young working-
class people. In six years, Argosy went from a few thousand copies per month to over half a
million.[1]
Street & Smith, a dime novel and boys' weekly publisher, was next on the market. Seeing Argosy 's
success, they launched The Popular Magazine in 1903, which they billed as the "biggest magazine
in the world" by virtue of its being two pages (the interior sides of the front and back cover) longer
than Argosy. Due to differences in page layout however, the magazine had substantially less text
than Argosy. The Popular Magazine did introduce color covers to pulp publishing, and the
magazine began to take off when in 1905 the publishers acquired the rights to serialize Ayesha, by
H. Rider Haggard, a sequel to his popular novel She. Haggard's Lost World genre influenced
several key pulp writers, including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Talbot Mundy and
Abraham Merritt.[2] In 1907, the cover price rose to 15 cents and 30 pages were added to each
issue; along with establishing a stable of authors for each magazine, this change proved successful
and circulation began to approach that of Argosy. Street and Smith's next innovation was the
introduction of specialized genre pulps, with each magazine focusing on a particular genre, such as
detective stories, romance, etc.[3]
Peak of popularity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 1/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
Pulp magazines began to decline during the 1940s, giving way to paperbacks, comics and digest-sized novels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 2/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
During the Second World War paper shortages had a serious impact on pulp production, starting a
steady rise in costs and the decline of the pulps. Beginning with Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
in 1941, pulp magazines began to switch to digest size; smaller, thicker magazines. In 1949, Street
& Smith closed most of their pulp magazines in order to move upmarket and produce slicks.[9]
Competition from comic-books and paperback novels further eroded the pulps’ marketshare, but it
was the widespread expansion of television that sounded the death knell of the pulps.[4] In a more
affluent post-war America, the price gap compared to slick magazines was far less significant. In
the 1950s, men's adventure magazines began to replace the pulp.
The 1957 liquidation of the American News Company, then the primary distributor of pulp
magazines, has sometimes been taken as marking the end of the "pulp era"; by that date, many of
the famous pulps of the previous generation, including Black Mask, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and
Weird Tales, were defunct.[1] Almost all of the few remaining pulp magazines are science fiction or
mystery magazines now in formats similar to "digest size", such as Analog Science Fiction and
Fact and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The format is still in use for some lengthy serials, like
the German science fiction weekly Perry Rhodan (over 3,000 issues as of 2019).
Over the course of their evolution, there were a huge number of pulp magazine titles; Harry
Steeger of Popular Publications claimed that his company alone had published over 300, and at
their peak they were publishing 42 titles per month.[10] Many titles of course survived only briefly.
While the most popular titles were monthly, many were bimonthly and some were quarterly.
The collapse of the pulp industry changed the landscape of publishing because pulps were the
single largest sales outlet for short stories. Combined with the decrease in slick magazine fiction
markets, writers attempting to support themselves by creating fiction switched to novels and book-
length anthologies of shorter pieces. Some ex-pulp writers like Hugh B. Cave and Robert Leslie
Bellem moved on to writing for television by the 1950s.
Genres
Pulp magazines often contained a wide variety of genre fiction, including, but not limited to,
adventure
aviation
detective/mystery
espionage
fantasy
gangster
horror/occult (including "weird menace")
humor
railroad
romance
science fiction
Série Noire (French crime mystery)
"spicy/saucy" (soft porn)
sports
war
Westerns (also see dime Western); the Colorado artist Arthur Roy Mitchell is particularly
known for his sketches of the covers of such western magazines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 3/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
The American Old West was a mainstay genre of early turn of the 20th century novels as well as
later pulp magazines, and lasted longest of all the traditional pulps. In many ways, the later men's
adventure ("the sweats") was the replacement of pulps.
Many classic science fiction and crime novels were originally serialized in pulp magazines such as
Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and Black Mask.
Popular pulp characters who appeared in anthology titles such as All-Story or Weird Tales:
Illustrators
Pulp covers were printed in color on higher-quality (slick) paper. They were famous for their half-
dressed damsels in distress, usually awaiting a rescuing hero. Cover art played a major part in the
marketing of pulp magazines. The early pulp magazines could boast covers by some distinguished
American artists; The Popular Magazine had covers by N.C. Wyeth, and Edgar Franklin Wittmack
contributed cover art to Argosy[12] and Short Stories.[13] Later, many artists specialized in creating
covers mainly for the pulps; a number of the most successful cover artists became as popular as
the authors featured on the interior pages. Among the most famous pulp artists were Walter
Baumhofer, Earle K. Bergey, Margaret Brundage, Edd Cartier, Virgil Finlay, Frank R. Paul,
Norman Saunders, Emmett Watson, Nick Eggenhofer, (who specialized in Western illustrations),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 4/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
Hugh J. Ward, George Rozen, and Rudolph Belarski.[14] Covers were important enough to sales
that sometimes they would be designed first; authors would then be shown the cover art and asked
to write a story to match.
Later pulps began to feature interior illustrations, depicting elements of the stories. The drawings
were printed in black ink on the same cream-colored paper used for the text, and had to use
specific techniques to avoid blotting on the coarse texture of the cheap pulp. Thus, fine lines and
heavy detail were usually not an option. Shading was by crosshatching or pointillism, and even
that had to be limited and coarse. Usually the art was black lines on the paper's background, but
Finlay and a few others did some work that was primarily white lines against large dark areas.
There were also career pulp writers, capable of turning out huge amounts of prose on a steady
basis, often with the aid of dictation to stenographers, machines or typists. Before he became a
novelist, Upton Sinclair was turning out at least 8,000 words per day seven days a week for the
pulps, keeping two stenographers fully employed. Pulps would often have their authors use
multiple pen names so that they could use multiple stories by the same person in one issue, or use
a given author's stories in three or more successive issues, while still appearing to have varied
content. One advantage pulps provided to authors was that they paid upon acceptance for material
instead of on publication; since a story might be accepted months or even years before publication,
to a working writer this was a crucial difference in cash flow.
Some pulp editors became known for cultivating good fiction and interesting features in their
magazines. Preeminent pulp magazine editors included Arthur Sullivant Hoffman (Adventure),[16]
Robert H. Davis (All-Story Weekly), Harry E. Maule (Short Stories),[17] Donald Kennicott (Blue
Book), Joseph T. Shaw (Black Mask), Farnsworth Wright (Weird Tales, Oriental Stories), John W.
Campbell (Astounding Science Fiction, Unknown) and Daisy Bacon (Love Story Magazine,
Detective Story Magazine).[18]
Authors featured
Well-known authors who wrote for pulps include:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 5/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 6/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
H. G. Wells P. G. Wodehouse
Henry S. Whitehead Cornell Woolrich
Raoul Whitfield Gordon Young
Tennessee Williams
Sinclair Lewis, first American winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, worked as an editor for
Adventure, writing filler paragraphs (brief facts or amusing anecdotes designed to fill small gaps in
page layout), advertising copy and a few stories.[19]
Publishers
A. A. Wyn's Magazine Publishers (Periodical House/Ace
Magazines) published Secret Agent X, Flying Aces and others
Better/Standard/Thrilling (The Thrilling Group) published Captain
Future, Startling Stories, The Phantom Detective, and The Black
Bat.
William Clayton published Ginger Stories, Pep Stories and
Snappy Stories
Columbia Publications published Future Science Fiction, Science
Fiction, and Science Fiction Quarterly
Dell Publishing published I Confess
Doubleday, Page and Company published Short Stories, West
and The Frontier
Fiction House published Planet Stories
Frank A. Munsey Co. published Argosy Cover of the pulp magazine
Harold Hersey Dime Mystery Book
Harry Donenfeld's Culture Publications published Spicy Magazine, January 1933
Detective, Spicy Mystery and Spicy Adventure
Hugo Gernsback published Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories
J.C.Henneberger's Rural Publications published Weird Tales and Oriental Tales
Martin Goodman published Ka-Zar, Marvel Tales and Marvel Science Stories
Hutchinson, main publisher of UK pulps[7]
Popular Publications published The Spider, G-8, Horror Stories, Black Mask, True Love and
later Argosy
The Ridgway Company published Adventure, Everybody's Magazine and Romance
Street & Smith published Astounding, Unknown, Doc Savage and The Shadow
Courtland Young's C.H. Young Publishing published Breezy Stories
Legacy
The term pulp fiction is often incorrectly used for massmarket paperbacks since the 1950s. The
Browne Popular Culture Library News noted:
Many of the paperback houses that contributed to the decline of the genre–Ace, Dell,
Avon, among others–were actually started by pulp magazine publishers. They had the
presses, the expertise, and the newsstand distribution networks which made the
success of the mass-market paperback possible. These pulp-oriented paperback houses
mined the old magazines for reprints. This kept pulp literature, if not pulp magazines,
alive. The Return of the Continental Op reprints material first published in Black
Mask; Five Sinister Characters contains stories first published in Dime Detective; and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 7/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
The Pocket Book of Science Fiction collects material from Thrilling Wonder Stories,
Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories.[20] But note that mass market
paperbacks are not pulps.
In 1991, The Pulpster debuted at that year's Pulpcon, the annual pulp magazine convention that
had begun in 1972. The magazine, devoted to the history and legacy of the pulp magazines, has
published each year since. It now appears in connection with PulpFest, the summer pulp
convention that grew out of and replaced Pulpcon. The Pulpster was originally edited by Tony
Davis and is currently edited by William Lampkin, who also runs the website ThePulp.Net.
Contributors have included Don Hutchison, Robert Sampson, Will Murray, Al Tonik, Nick Carr,
Mike Resnick, Hugh B. Cave, Joseph Wrzos, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Chet Williamson, and
many others. [21]
In 1992, Rich W. Harvey came out with a magazine called Pulp Adventures reprinting old classics.
It came out regularly until 2001, and then started up again in 2014.[22]
In 1994, Quentin Tarantino directed the film Pulp Fiction. The working title of the film was Black
Mask,[23] in homage to the pulp magazine of that name, and it embodied the seedy, violent, often
crime-related spirit found in pulp magazines.
In 1997 C. Cazadessus Jr. launched Pulpdom, a continuation of his Hugo Award-winning ERB-
dom which began in 1960. It ran for 75 issues and featured articles about the content and selected
fiction from the pulps. It became Pulpdom Online in 2013 and continues quarterly publication.
After the year 2000, several small independent publishers released magazines which published
short fiction, either short stories or novel-length presentations, in the tradition of the pulp
magazines of the early 20th century. These included Blood 'N Thunder, High Adventure and a
short-lived magazine which revived the title Argosy. These specialist publications, printed in
limited press runs, were pointedly not printed on the brittle, high-acid wood pulp paper of the old
publications and were not mass market publications targeted at a wide audience. In 2004, Lost
Continent Library published Secret of the Amazon Queen by E.A. Guest, their first contribution to
a "New Pulp Era", featuring the hallmarks of pulp fiction for contemporary mature readers:
violence, horror and sex. E.A. Guest was likened to a blend of pulp era icon Talbot Mundy and
Stephen King by real-life explorer David Hatcher Childress.
In 2002, the tenth issue of McSweeney's Quarterly was guest edited by Michael Chabon.
Published as McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, it is a collection of "pulp
fiction" stories written by such current well-known authors as Stephen King, Nick Hornby, Aimee
Bender and Dave Eggers. Explaining his vision for the project, Chabon wrote in the introduction,
"I think that we have forgotten how much fun reading a short story can be, and I hope that if
nothing else, this treasury goes some small distance toward reminding us of that lost but
fundamental truth."
The Scottish publisher DC Thomson publishes "My Weekly Compact Novel" every week.[24] It is
literally a pulp novel, though it does not fall into the hard-edged genre most associated with pulp
fiction.
From 2006 through 2019, Anthony Tollin's imprint Sanctum Books has reprinted all 182 DOC
SAVAGE pulp novels, all 24 of Paul Ernst's AVENGER novels, the 14 WHISPERER novels from
the original pulp series and all but three novels of the entire run of THE SHADOW (most of his
publications featuring two novels in one book).[25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 8/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
See also
Novels portal
B movie
Crimefighters
Dime novel
George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection
Hard Case Crime
Il Giallo Mondadori
Science fiction magazine
References
1. "A Two-Minute History of the Pulps", in The Adventure House Guide to the Pulps, edited by
Doug Ellis, John Locke, and John Gunnison. Silver Spring, MD, Adventure House, 2000. (p. ii–
iv).
2. See Lee Server, Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers (2002), pg.131.
3. Reynolds, Quentin. The Fiction Factory ; Or, From Pulp Row to Quality Street: The Story of
100 Years of Publishing at Street & Smith. Random House, 1955. (Covers: Street & Smith,
Nick Carter, Max Brand, Buffalo Bill, Frank Merriwell, Gerald Smith, Richard Duffy, Frederick
Faust, dime novel, Horatio Alger, Henry Ralston, Ned Buntline, Ormond Smith, Beadle's,
Edward Stratemeyer, detective fiction, Laura Jean Libbey, Astounding Science Fiction, Edith
Evans)
4. "Pulp Illustration: Pulp Magazines – Illustration History" (https://www.illustrationhistory.org/genr
es/pulp-illustration-pulp-magazines). www.illustrationhistory.org. Retrieved January 22, 2020.
5. Hulse, Ed (2009). "The Big Four (Plus One)". The Blood 'n' Thunder Guide to Collecting Pulps.
Murania Press. pp. 19–47. ISBN 0-9795955-0-9.
6. Server, Lee (1993). Danger Is My Business: an illustrated history of the Fabulous Pulp
Magazines. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. pp. 62–65. ISBN 978-0-8118-0112-6.
7. Ashley, Michael (2006). The Age of the Storytellers: British Popular Fiction Magazines, 1880–
1950. British Library. ISBN 1-58456-170-X
8. "Orchideengarten, Der". in: M.B. Tymn and Mike Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird
Fiction Magazines. Westport: Greenwood, 1985. pp. 866. ISBN 0-313-21221-X
9. Ashley , Michael. The history of the science-fiction magazine: the story of the science-fiction
magazines from 1950 to 1970, Transformations, Volume 2 (2005), pg. 3 ISBN 978-0-85323-
779-2
10. Haining, Peter (1975). The Fantastic Pulps. Vintage Books, a division of Random House.
ISBN 0-394-72109-8.
11. Hutchison, Don (1995). The Great Pulp Heroes. Mosaic Press. ISBN 0-88962-585-9.
12. Hulse, Ed (2009). The Blood 'n' Thunder Guide to Collecting Pulps. Muriana Press. pp. 26,
163. ISBN 978-0979595509.
13. Robinson, Frank M., and Davidson, Lawrence. Pulp Culture – The Art of Fiction Magazines.
Collectors Press, 2007. ISBN 1-933112-30-1 (p.42).
14. The Adventure House Guide to the Pulps, edited by Doug Ellis, John Locke, and John
Gunnison. Silver Spring, MD, Adventure House, 2000. (p. xi–xii).
15. John A. Dinan, Sports in the Pulp Magazines. McFarland, 1998, ISB0786404817 (pp. 130–32).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 9/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
16. Bleiler,Richard "Forgotten Giant: Hoffman’s Adventure". Purple Prose Magazine, November
1998, p. 3-12.
17. Sampson,Robert.(1991) Yesterday's Faces:Dangerous Horizons Popular Press, 1991, (p.87).
18. Locke, John ed. “Editors You Want to Know: Daisy Bacon” by Joa Humphrey in Pulpwood
Days: Editors You Want to Know. Off-Trail, 2007. ISBN 0-9786836-2-5 (p. 77). Daisy Bacon
(1899?–1986) was nicknamed "Queen of the Woodpulps".
19. Schorer, M. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, pp. 3–22. McGraw-Hill, 1961.
20. "They Came from the Newsstand: Pulp Magazines from the Browne Library" (https://web.archi
ve.org/web/20111006073905/http://blogs.bgsu.edu/pclnews/?p=9). Browne Popular Culture
Library News. Bowling Green State University. May 31, 1994. Archived from the original (http://
blogs.bgsu.edu/pclnews/?p=9) on October 6, 2011. Retrieved October 22, 2009.
21. "About "The Pulpster" " (https://thepulpster.com/about/). The Pulpster. March 5, 2021.
22. Stephensen-Payne, Phil (2018). "Pulp Adventures" (http://www.philsp.com/data/data392.html#
PULPADVENTURES). Magazine Data File.
23. "Pulp Fiction (1994) – Release Info" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/releaseinfo) – via
IMDb.
24. "DC Thomson Shop – Home Page" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100818010637/http://www.
dcthomson.co.uk/subscriptions/default.asp?pageName=productDetails&productID=15).
Dcthomson.co.uk. Archived from the original (http://www.dcthomson.co.uk/subscriptions/defaul
t.asp?pageName=productDetails&productID=15) on August 18, 2010. Retrieved December 8,
2010.
25. "Ten Years in the Shadow's Sanctum — Anthony Tollin's Sanctum Books – PulpFest" (https://w
ww.pulpfest.com/2016/06/ten-years-shadows-sanctum-anthony-tollins-sanctum-books/).
Sources
Chambliss, Julian and William Svitavsky, "From Pulp Hero to Superhero: Culture, Race, and
Identity in AmericanPopular Culture, 1900–1940 (http://scholarship.rollins.edu/as_facpub/2/),"
Studies in American Culture 30 (1) (October 2008)
Ellis, Doug. Uncovered: The Hidden Art of the Girlie Pulps – Gold Medal Winner for Best
Popular Culture Book BEA 2004 (Adventure House, −2003) ISBN 1-886937-74-5
Gunnison, Locke and Ellis. Adventure House Guide to the Pulps (Adventure House, 2000)
ISBN 1-886937-45-1
Hersey, Harold. The New Pulpwood Editor (Adventure House, 2003) ISBN 1-886937-68-0
Lesser, Robert. Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines
(Book Sales, 2003) ISBN 0-7858-1707-7
Locke, John-editor. Pulp Fictioneers – Adventures in the Storytelling Business (Adventure
House, 2004) ISBN 1-886937-83-4
Locke, John-editor. Pulpwood Days – Vol. 1 Editors You Want To Know (Off-Trail Publications,
2007) ISBN 0-9786836-2-5
Parfrey, Adam, et al. It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps (Feral
House, 2003) ISBN 0-922915-81-4
Robinson, Frank and Davidson, Lawrence. Pulp Culture (Collector's Press, 2007) ISBN 978-1-
933112-30-5
Further reading
Dinan, John A. (1983) The Pulp Western : A Popular History of the Western Fiction Magazine
in America. Borgo Press, ISBN 0-89370-161-0.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 10/11
5/21/23, 9:47 AM Pulp magazine - Wikipedia
Goodstone, Tony (1970) The Pulps: 50 Years of American Pop Culture, Bonanza Books
(Crown Publishers, Inc.), ISBN 978-0-394-44186-3.
Goulart, Ron (1972) Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp Magazine, Arlington House,
ISBN 978-0-87000-172-7.
Goulart, Ron (1988) The Dime Detectives. Mysterious Press, 1988. ISBN 0-89296-191-0.
Hamilton, Frank and Hullar, Link (1988), Amazing Pulp Heroes, Gryphon Books, ISBN 0-
936071-09-5.
Robbins, Leonard A. (1988). The Pulp Magazine Index. (Six Volumes). Starmont House.
ISBN 1-55742-111-0.
Sampson, Robert (1983) Yesterday's Faces: A Study of Series Characters in the Early Pulp
Magazines . Volume 1. Glory figures, Vol. 2. Strange days, Vol. 3. From the Dark Side, Vol. 4.
The Solvers, Vol 5. Dangerous Horizons, Vol. 6. Violent lives. Bowling Green University
Popular Press, ISBN 0-87972-217-7.
External links
The Pulp Magazines Project (http://www.pulpmags.org/default.htm)
ThePulp.Net (https://thepulp.net/)
PEAPS – Pulp Era Amateur Press Society (https://peaps.net/)
Pulp Illustration Art (http://www.pulpillustrationart.com)
Pulp International (http://www.pulpinternational.com/)
CNN: "Girls, Guns and Money," November 2005 (http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/1
1/01/hard.case.books/index.html)
Mt. St. Vincent University Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection (http://www.msvu.ca/en/home/library/
aboutthelibrary/policiesprocedures/collectionpolicy/lesbianpulpfictioncollection.aspx)
"Pulp Winds", December 2009 (https://web.archive.org/web/20170630093807/http://www.grave
distractions.com/pulp-winds.php)
"In Praise of Pulp Fiction" (https://web.archive.org/web/20120113090603/http://www.life.com/g
allery/61281/in-praise-of-pulp-fiction#index/0), slideshow by Life
Pulp Fiction Collection (https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/pulp.html) at the Library of Congress
Clark Pulp Fiction Collection (http://ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/OCl0090.xml;chu
nk.id=headerlink;brand=default) at Cleveland Public Library
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine 11/11