The genre-specific pulps and hero pulps that marked the 1930s and '40s had their beginnings in the general adventure pulps -- magazines like Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, and others. Their issues were filled with exciting tales in a variety of exotic locales -- the desert, the wild West, the African and South American jungles, battlefields from any number of wars, the seven seas, even other worlds. [The illustration that leads off this paragraph is the cover from the August 1940 issue of Adventure.]
Authors such as Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, H. Bedford-Jones, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Theodore Roscoe, and others thrilled readers every issue.
Some writers were highly prolific and appeared in many issues of several magazines. For example, the work of H. Bedford-Jones appeared under a number of pseudonyms in issue after issue of pulps such as Short Stories, Adventure, Blue Book, and Argosy. Likewise, Frederick Faust -- more commonly recognized as "Max Brand" -- wrote reams of fiction under more than a dozen pseudonyms, and in some cases had two or three stories within a single issue of Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine under as many author names.
Other writers might appear in print less frequently than someone like Bedford-Jones or Faust, but their names on the cover of a magazine might guarantee higher-than-normal sales for an issue. For example, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan was a highly popular character, as was his John Carter of Mars. Burroughs' name on an issue of a All-Story or Blue Book would help ensure solid sales from news racks -- and issues of those magazines go for high prices today among collectors because of the inclusion of a Burroughs story.
Thrills and chills and solid storytelling -- that's what readers of the adventure pulps wanted. And there were plenty of writers willing to fulfill those desires.
Posted by ds at September 4, 2002 02:24 PM
Thanks for the article on the general adventure pulps. They are my favorites of all the pulp magazines, but their stories seem to be reprinted the least.
Posted by: William Peacock at April 25, 2003 03:08 PM
