The Argosy, Vol. 55

About this issue

This table of contents page from The Argosy — Frank Munsey's pioneering all-fiction weekly, launched in 1882 and widely considered the first true pulp magazine — reveals the eclectic mix that defined the format: serialized domestic fiction (Mrs. Henry Wood's The Engagement of Susan Chase), illustrated medical melodrama, travel writing, and short stories crowded together on cheap wood-pulp paper. No painted cover survives in this view, but the contents themselves map the pulp blueprint: genre variety, prolific output, illustrated serials, and brand-name authors sold by the page. The Argosy's model — low price, high volume, fiction wall-to-wall — directly seeded the specialized pulps of the 1920s whose genres comic books would inherit wholesale.