The Popular Magazine initially started as a
boy's magazine, but the editorial focus was shifted after only three issues to one of adult mainstream fiction, a program the magazine would retain for the rest of its publication run. The magazine was printed on pulp paper. The magazine can be considered a forerunner of the
pulp fiction magazines that were prominent from the 1920s to 1950s, as it avoided more highbrow fare in favor of fiction "for the common man." Several issues of
The Popular Magazine featured illustrations by
N.C. Wyeth. One of the magazine's earliest successes came with the publication of
H. Rider Haggard's novel
Ayesha in 1905. Other notable writers published by
The Popular Magazine include
Morgan Robertson,
H.G. Wells,
Rafael Sabatini,
Zane Grey,
Beatrice Grimshaw,
Elmer Brown Mason,
James Francis Dwyer and
William Wallace Cook.
The Popular Magazine published
Craig Kennedy stories by
Arthur B. Reeve, and other crime fiction by Frederick William Davis In October 1928 the name was changed back to
The Popular Magazine once again. There was a significant turnover of writers around 1930, and
Street & Smith correspondence with one of its authors at that time admitted that it had been decided to "cut out the old writers and get down to material of speedier, cheaper quality." ==References==