The Argosy, Vol. 43

This issue of The Argosy predates the lurid painted covers the pulp era made famous — the page shown is pure text, the opening of "Lady Grace" by Mrs. Henry Wood, author of East Lynne, set in roman type on cheap wood-pulp stock. Frank Munsey's Argosy is the founding document of the pulp magazine form: by 1882 he was printing on inexpensive wood-pulp paper to cut costs, and by the 1890s the all-fiction format was locked in. The genres comic books would later inherit — adventure, mystery, romance — were being assembled here, story by story, long before a painted rocketship or a hard-boiled detective ever graced a cover.