The Argosy, Vol. 65

This issue of The Argosy presents no illustrated cover in the modern sense — only dignified letterpress typography announcing Colonel Fane's Secret by Sydney Hodges and Chapter XVI of a serialized adventure novel. That restraint marks where pulp culture stood in 1898: Frank Munsey had already converted The Argosy to cheap wood-pulp paper in 1882, birthing the pulp magazine format, but lurid painted covers were still years away. What this page does signal is the serial fiction machine that would feed reader appetite for adventure, mystery, and sensation — the same appetite that later demanded screaming cover art and, eventually, comic books. The Argosy is rightly called the first true pulp magazine; this volume is an early artifact of that revolution.