The Argosy, Vol. 35

This page opening from The Argosy—Frank Munsey's story magazine, founded 1882—shows no painted cover in the pulp tradition; instead, a clean letterpress title page announces serialized fiction with chapter headings and close-set type. Winifred Power, Chapter XVI, 'Secrets and Surprises,' plunges the reader into a locked-room scene of fever, family crisis, and a youth found delirious on a mattress. The Argosy is historically pivotal: by switching in 1896 to cheap wood-pulp paper and all-fiction content, Munsey invented the pulp magazine format. This 1883 issue predates that transformation, representing the respectable literary miscellany that would mutate into the genre-fiction engine feeding dime adventure, weird fiction, and eventually the comic book.