Munsey's Magazine, May 1919

Munsey's Magazine serialized adventure fiction across the globe, mixing society intrigue with colonial settings. This issue features George Agnew Chamberlain's Brokers in Adventure, illustrated by Lee Conrey—a story pairing a Manhattan financier with a society woman on an elephant hunt in Africa. The pulp magazines of the early twentieth century popularized genre fiction through affordably-priced pages and eye-catching covers. Publishers like Frank Munsey built massive circulations by offering readers serialized tales of crime, exploration, and romance. These adventure serials, illustrated in black-and-white inside but often heralded by painted covers, established narrative templates and visual conventions that comic books would later adopt and adapt.