The Argosy, Vol. 36

This page opening from The Argosy — November 1883 — shows not a painted cover but the spare, typeset interior of a Victorian monthly magazine, here beginning Chapter XXXI of Winifred Power, subtitled "A Last Interview." No lurid illustration competes with the prose; the design is entirely letterpress, with a classical serif masthead and chapter headings in spaced small capitals. The Argosy (founded 1865 by Mary Elizabeth Braddon) was a respectable British literary monthly, ancestor in spirit — if not in pulp paper or sensational art — to the American dime-magazine tradition that Frank Munsey would transform into the true pulp format when he converted this same title's American namesake in 1896, effectively launching the pulp era.