Early years The first issue of
The Golden Argosy included the first installment of two novels: ''Do and Dare, or a Brave Boy's Fight for a Fortune
, by Horatio Alger, which took the cover page, and Nick and Nellie, or God Helps them that Helps Themselves
, by Edward S. Ellis. There were also short stories and some non-fiction. The target audience was both boys and girls, from ten to twenty years old. Frank H. Converse, who in addition to an early serial (A Voyage to the Gold Coast, or Jack Bond's Quest
, beginning in the March 24, 1883 issue) had several short stories in the first couple of years of the magazine; Oliver Optic, (Making a Man of Himself
, beginning in the October 20, 1883 issue); and G. A. Henty (Facing Peril: A Tale of the Coal Mines'', from September 5, 1885). The magazine's subtitle,
Freighted with Treasures for Boys and Girls, was dropped in 1886, though the contents were still aimed at the same youthful readers as before. There was little science fiction in the early years; one exception was
The Conquest of the Moon, by
Andre Laurie, which began serialization in
The Argosy in 1889;
Pulp era Editorial policy After the change to an all-fiction monthly format in 1896,
The Argosy was a men's and boy's adventure magazine, Stone had sold several stories to
Bob Davis, the editor of
All-Story Weekly, before its merger with
The Argosy, but had never sold to Matthew White, who had been editor of
The Argosy since before the change to pulp format. Ed Hulse, a historian of pulp magazines, while generally praising the quality of the fiction in
Argosy during the pulp era, comments that during the 1920s some "bland, conventional dramas" appeared in the magazine, by writers such as
Edgar Franklin,
Isabel Ostrander, and
E. J. Rath. Hulse suggests that this editorial policy was aimed at attracting more women readers to the magazine. After White's editorship, and for the next fifteen years, the requirements that
Argosy's editors sent to writers' magazines such as ''
Writer's Digest and Author & Journalist'' emphasized that they were looking for stories focused on action, with a masculine point of view. Bittner's comments in 1928 asked for "any good clean story with sound plot, rapid-fire action and strong masculine appeal", and gave a long list of genres all of which were acceptable—even romance so long as "the love element is not unduly stressed". In 1931 Moore outlined the stories to be excluded: "love or domestic tales, sex stories, stories with a predominant woman interest or told from a woman’s viewpoint". In 1935 Clayton provided a list of hackneyed plots to be avoided, including escaping convicts, an underwater adventure in which the hero fights an octopus and a giant clam as well as the villain, and a legionnaire who "dies gloriously for Dear Old France". The policy of action stories told from a male viewpoint continued through the rest of the decade.
New writers Many writers who later became well-known sold to
The Argosy early in their careers.
William MacLeod Raine's first story, "The Luck of Eustace Blount", appeared in the March 1899 issue.
William Wallace Cook contributed numerous serials in the first decade of the 20th century, beginning with
The Spur of Necessity in the September1900 issue after half-a-dozen sales to other markets. Cook wrote
adventure fiction with elements of satire, an unusual combination for the pulps.
James Branch Cabell's first sale was to
The Argosy; his "An Amateur Ghost" appeared in the February1902 issue.
William Hamilton Osborne's first sale was also to
The Argosy, but after paying for it White returned the story to Osborne as the plot was too similar to other stories that had appeared elsewhere. It did eventually appear in the New York
Daily News, but Osborne's first appearance in print was in
The Argosy with "Turner's Luck with Rouge et Noir", in the September 1902 issue.
Louis Joseph Vance, the creator of the character
The Lone Wolf, published most of his fiction in
The Popular Magazine, but his first two sales were to Munsey, including
The Coil of Circumstance, a serial that began in the November 1903
Argosy.
Albert Payson Terhune, later the author of
Lad: A Dog, frequently published in the Munsey magazines early in his career. His first sale to
The Argosy was "The Fugitive", a novella that began serialization in the August 1905 issue, and he sold a dozen more stories to the magazine over the next few years.
Science fiction and fantasy " by
A. Merritt (August 7, 1920)|leftThe first pulp issue, in December 1896, included a science fiction story, "Citizen 504", by C. H. Palmer, and science fiction featured regularly thereafter. and other examples came from H.D. Smiley, whose "Bagley's Coagulated Cyclone" and "Bagley's Rain-Machine" appeared in the September 1906 and February 1907 issues. Some more sophisticated science fiction also appeared, including "Finis", an end of the world story by
Frank Lillie Pollock, in June 1906.
George Griffith, an important early science fiction writer from the UK, published almost none of his work in the US in his lifetime. An exception was
The Lake of Gold, serialized in
The Argosy from December 1902 to July 1903, in which a group of Britons and Americans use the riches from a lake of gold in
Patagonia to enforce peace across Europe.
The Argosy's sister magazine,
All-Story Weekly, was the venue for most of the science fiction in the Munsey magazines, but
Argosy printed
Murray Leinster's first science fiction story, "The Runaway Skyscraper", in 1919.
Edgar Rice Burroughs's
Barsoom series had begun in
All-Story Weekly, as had his
Tarzan novels; when the two magazines merged in 1920 later episodes of each series appeared in the combined magazine,
Argosy All-Story Weekly.
Abraham Merritt's
The Metal Monster began serialization in the August 7 issue, the third one after the merger, and many more science fiction and fantasy stories followed in the next two decades by authors such as
Ray Cummings,
Ralph Milne Farley,
Otis Adelbert Kline,
Victor Rousseau,
Eando Binder,
Donald Wandrei,
Manly Wade Wellman,
Jack Williamson,
Arthur Leo Zagat, and
Henry Kuttner. In 1940 and 1941
Frederick C. Painton published a series of stories in
Argosy about Joel Quaite, a time detective who travels into the past to solve mysteries.
Erle Stanley Gardner, later famous for his
Perry Mason detective stories, sold "Rain Magic", his first science fiction short story, to
Argosy in 1928, and went on to write several more. Gardner combined science fiction with detective plots in some of these stories, and he was not the only writer to do so:
Garret Smith's "You've Killed Privacy!" in the July 7, 1928
Argosy was about using
CCTV to catch criminals, and Leinster's "Darkness on Fifth Avenue", in the November 30, 1929
Argosy, about a device that can bring artificial darkness to an area, was originally intended for the detective pulps.
Other genres Argosy's
Western fiction included
Zane Grey's
Last of the Duanes, which appeared in the September 1914
Argosy, and
Walt Coburn's first story, "The Peace Treaty of the Seven Up", in the July 8, 1922 issue.
Max Brand, a very prolific Western writer, sold his first pulp stories to
All-Story in 1917, but by the end of the year had begun selling to
Argosy too.
Clarence Mulford was the creator of the character
Hopalong Cassidy; the first few stories in the series appeared in other magazines, but many were published in
Argosy in the early 1920s.
Robert E. Howard, best known for his stories about
Conan the Barbarian, also wrote Westerns, several of which were published in
Argosy in the mid-1930s.
O. Henry appeared in the March 1904
Argosy with "Witches Loaves".
H. Bedford-Jones, a popular author with over 1,000 stories published in the pulps over his career, sold his first story, "Out of a Stormy Sky", to
The Argosy in 1910, and appeared in its pages regularly for the next four decades. Bedford-Jones's series about adventurer John Solomon began with
The Gate of Farewell, serialized in the January and February 1914 issues, and continued in
The Argosy and elsewhere for over twenty years.
George Worts published the first of his "Peter the Brazen" series, about an "expert wireless operator and dauntless adventurer", in
Argosy in the October 5, 1918 issue; it became one of the most popular series in the magazine, with all twenty stories appearing in
Argosy into the mid-1930s. Under his own name and a pseudonym, Loring Brent, Worts contributed scores of other stories to
Argosy over the same period.
Johnston McCulley had launched his
Zorro series in
All-Story in 1919 and more episodes appeared in
Argosy after the two magazines merged.
Fred MacIsaac, one of
Argosy's most popular authors, first appeared in the November 1, 1924 issue with the first installment of his novel
Nothing but Money. Most of MacIsaac's work was not science fiction; an exception was
The Hothouse World, a serial that ran in
Argosy from February 21 to March 28, 1931.
Theodore Roscoe was a frequent contributor of adventure stories set in exotic locations such as
Timbuktu and
Saigon. He traveled the world once his writing began to pay him well enough to allow him to do so, and used the experience to add color to his stories.
Borden Chase sold his first story, "Tunnel Men", to
Argosy in 1934 while he was a laborer on the tunnel being built under the
East River in New York. He became a regular contributor, and his "East River", which appeared in
Argosy in December 1934, was filmed the following year as
Under Pressure.
Ship of the Line, an early novel in
C. S. Forester's stories about
Horatio Hornblower, was serialized in Argosy in early 1938. Max Brand, though best known for his Westerns, wrote in many other genres as well, including
historical fiction and mystery stories. He was the creator of
Dr. Kildare, and four novels in the series appeared in
Argosy between 1938 and 1940. Mystery contributors included
Cornell Woolrich, beginning with "Hot Water" in the December 28, 1935 issue, and
Norbert Davis.
Art In 1903
Street & Smith launched
The Popular Magazine, an early pulp rival to
The Argosy with color art on the cover. Up to this point
The Argosy had had text only on the cover, and no art, but in 1905, probably in response to
The Popular Magazine, it began to run limited color art on the cover, and in 1912 it began to use full-color cover art. At the start of the 1920s the most frequent cover artists for
Argosy were
Modest Stein,
Stockton Mulford, and
P. J Monahan; by the end of the decade
Paul Stahr and
Robert Graef had taken over most of the covers, and remained the main cover artists until the mid-1930s. Hulse considers the artwork of this era to have been "consistently good". Towards the end of the 1930s
Rudolph Belarski,
Emmett Watson, and
George Rozen become regular cover artists.
Men's magazine era Transition from pulp format In 1942, in an attempt to revive the magazine's fortunes, the all-fiction format was abandoned and articles about
World War II and "sensationalized" news stories were added. The cover was redesigned starting with the March 7, 1942, issue, with the outline of a jet plane replacing the
galleon behind the title, and a picture of the film star
Dorothy Lamour on the cover instead of the usual adventure-themed cover art. The hearings were thought by most publishers to be pointless, and nobody from Munsey attended.
Argosy briefly lost its permit as a result, but did not miss any issues. Richard Abbott, the editor of ''Writer's Digest
, commented that Popular were "again making Argosy
the fine old book it was", and that when they acquired Argosy'' it had "recently been degraded by wretched editing". In September1943, the format changed from pulp to slick, but Popular still planned to print only fiction. Rogers Terrill, the editor, announced that "we have stepped out of the pulp field entirely ... We felt there was room in the country for an all-fiction slick, and we're it."
Slick men's magazine era , the founder of Popular Publications, and Jerry Mason, from 1949 to 1953 the editor of Argosy By the end of 1943, the policy had changed back to include feature articles again as well as fiction. This made
Argosy a competitor with slick general
men's magazines such as
True. After
Argosy was acquired by Popular Publications, less science fiction appeared for a couple of years. Exceptions included some of
Walter R. Brooks'
Mr. Ed stories. The late 1940s saw more science fiction again, with stories by
Nelson Bond,
A. Bertram Chandler, and
Robert A. Heinlein, whose "
Gentlemen, Be Seated!" appeared in the May 1948 issue, and in the 1950s
Argosy published work by
Ray Bradbury,
Arthur C. Clarke, and
Philip José Farmer. In 1977 one of
Argosy's special issues was devoted to science fiction; the stories in it were all reprinted from Popular's
Super Science Stories, rather than from earlier issues of
Argosy. Gardner enlisted assistance from professional experts to examine the cases of dozens of convicts who maintained their innocence after their appeals were exhausted. The column ran for ten years, ending in October 1958, and was
adapted for television as a 26-episode series by
NBC. Many of the convictions were eventually overturned. == Assessment ==