The Argosy, Vol. 43

This issue of The Argosy predates the lurid painted covers that would define the pulp era — the page shown is pure text, a chapter opening for Mrs. Henry Wood's serial "Lady Grace," set in the genteel drawing-rooms of Berkeley Square. Founded by Frank Munsey in 1882 and reformatted in 1896 as the first all-fiction pulp on cheap wood-pulp stock, The Argosy in this early incarnation still resembled a family literary magazine. Yet it was already doing the essential pulp work: delivering serialized fiction to a mass audience at low price. Within a decade Munsey's gamble on rough paper and cheaper ink would seed the ecosystem — adventure, romance, detection — from which science fiction, weird horror, and hardboiled crime would grow, flowing directly into the comic book formats of the 1930s.