The Argosy, Vol. 41 (1886): Table of Contents

This contents page from The Argosy—founded by Frank Andrew Munsey in 1882 and fully converted to wood-pulp paper by 1896—lists the serial and short fiction that defined the late-Victorian story magazine. Titles such as Lady Valeria (illustrated by Mary L. Gow), A Tragedy by Johnny Ludlow, and Fight at the Farmhouse: An Incident of the Zulu War map the range of the form: domestic romance, sensation serial, imperial adventure. Munsey's decision to fill pages with continuous fiction rather than essays pointed directly toward the pulp explosion of the 1890s–1930s, when descendants of The Argosy would crystallize science fiction, weird horror, and hardboiled crime—the very genres the American comic book would later inherit and compress into panels.