The Argosy, Vol. 51, No. 3

A black-suited man reclines on a stone bench, one arm draped languidly, while a robed figure stands before him in what reads as an antechamber or colonnade — the scene suggesting intrigue, confrontation, or negotiation in some vaguely Eastern or classical setting. The engraved illustration, rendered in fine crosshatch, carries none of the lurid painted flash that would define later pulps; The Argosy was the prototype, launched by Frank Munsey in 1882 and reformatted in 1888 as the first all-fiction pulp, printed on cheap wood-pulp paper. It pioneered serialized adventure fiction for a mass audience, laying the commercial and narrative groundwork from which science fiction, sword-and-sorcery, and hardboiled crime would emerge over the following four decades.