Categories | Pulp magazine, Men's magazine |
---|---|
Founded | 1905 |
Final issue | 1975 |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Blue Book was a popular 20th-century American magazine with a lengthy 70-year run under various titles from 1905 to 1975. [1] It was a sibling magazine to The Red Book Magazine and The Green Book Magazine .
Launched as The Monthly Story Magazine, it was published under that title from May 1905 to August 1906 with a change to The Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine for issues from September 1906 to April 1907. In its early days, Blue Book also carried a supplement on theatre actors called "Stageland". The magazine was aimed at both male and female readers. [1]
For the next 45 years (May 1907 to January 1952), it was known as The Blue Book Magazine, Blue Book Magazine, Blue Book, [2] and Blue Book of Fiction and Adventure. The title was shortened with the February 1952 issue to simply Bluebook, continuing until May 1956. With a more exploitative angle, the magazine was revived with an October 1960 issue as Bluebook for Men, and the title again became Bluebook for the final run from 1967 to 1975. In its post-1960 final incarnation, Bluebook became a men's adventure magazine, publishing purportedly true stories. [1]
In its 1920s heyday, Blue Book was regarded as one of the "Big Four" pulp magazines (the best-selling, highest-paying and most critically acclaimed pulps), along with Adventure , Argosy and Short Stories . [3] The magazine was nicknamed "King of the Pulps" in the 1930s. [1] Pulp historian Ed Hulse has stated that between the 1910s and the 1950s Blue Book "achieved and sustained a level of excellence reached by few other magazines". [3]
The early publishers were Story-Press Corporation and Consolidated Magazines, followed in 1929 by McCall. After H.S. Publications took over the reins in October 1960, Hanro (Sterling) was the publisher from August 1964 until March 1966 and then the QMG Magazine Corporation, beginning April 1967.
The first editor of Blue Book was Trumbull White (who would later edit Adventure magazine). White was succeeded in 1906 by Karl Edwin Harriman. Under Harriman, Blue Book would reach a circulation of 200,000 copies in 1909. [1] From 1911 to 1919 Ray Long was the editor. [1] Harriman took the editorial reins again in February 1919. By the time of Harriman's departure, sales of Blue Book had fallen to 80,000 copies. Edwin Balmer edited Blue Book from 1927 to 1929. Balmer managed to raise the circulation of the magazine to 180,000 by 1929, probably due to the reappearance of Burroughs' Tarzan stories in the magazine. [1] Balmer was succeeded by Blue Book's longest running editor, Donald Kennicott (1929 to January 1952). [4] Later editors were Maxwell Hamilton (February 1952 through the mid-1950s) and Andre Fontaine in the mid-1950s, followed by Frederick A. Birmingham. [1] Maxwell Hamilton returned for the 1960 revival, followed by B. R. Ampolsk in 1967.
Cover artists during the 1930s included Dean Cornwell, Joseph Chenoweth, [5] Henry J. Soulen, and Herbert Morton Stoops, who continued as the cover artist during the 1940s. Interior Illustrators for the magazine included Alex Raymond and Austin Briggs (better known for their comics work), John Clymer, John Richard Flanagan, Joseph Franke, L. R. Gustavson, and Henry Thiede. [3]
The first Blue Book contributors included science-fiction authors George Allan England, William Hope Hodgson and William Wallace Cook. [4] Blue Book also published the "Free Lances in Diplomacy" (1910) series by Clarence H. New (1862–1933) of early spy stories. [6] Rider Haggard and Albert Payson Terhune also published work in Blue Book. Zane Grey and Clarence E. Mulford added their Western stories to the magazine's selection of fiction. [3]
In the 1920s, Blue Book's roster of authors included two of the world's most famous writers of popular fiction: Edgar Rice Burroughs and Agatha Christie. [3] In addition to Tarzan, Burroughs published material about "Nyoka, the Jungle Girl" in Blue Book. Nyoka first appeared in "The Land of Hidden Men," a 1929 Blue Book short story by Burroughs. [7] The characters of Sax Rohmer, James Oliver Curwood, and Beatrice Grimshaw appeared in Blue Book. [4] Adventure fiction was a staple of Blue Book; in addition to Burroughs, P. C. Wren, H. Bedford-Jones, Achmed Abdullah, George F. Worts, Lemuel de Bra (who specialized in "Chinatown" thrillers) and William L. Chester (with his Burroughs-influenced "Hawk of the Wilderness", about a white boy adopted by Native Americans) all published in the magazine. [3] Sea stories were also popular in Blue Book, and George Fielding Eliot, Captain A. E. Dingle and Albert Richard Wetjen were some of the publication's authors known for this subgenre. [8] Bedford-Jones and Donald Barr Chidsey wrote historical fiction for Blue Book. [3]
Writers during the 1940s included Nelson S. Bond, Max Brand, Gelett Burgess, Eustace Cockrell, Irvin S. Cobb, Robert A. Heinlein, MacKinlay Kantor, Willy Ley, Theodore Pratt, Ivan Sanderson, Luke Short (pseudonym of Frederick D. Glidden, 1908–1975), Booth Tarkington, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Philip Wylie and Dornford Yates. Blue Book managed to attract fiction from a number of authors who did not normally publish in pulp magazines, including Georges Simenon, Shelby Foote and William Lindsay Gresham. [1]
General anthologies from Blue Book:
Single author/team collections from Blue Book:
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American writer, best known for his prolific output in the adventure, science fiction, and fantasy genres. Best known for creating the characters Tarzan and John Carter, he also wrote the Pellucidar series, the Amtor series, and the Caspak trilogy.
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 through the 1960s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.
Redbook is an American women's magazine that is published by the Hearst magazine division. It is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines. It ceased print publication after January 2019 and now operates exclusively online.
Tarzanesque is a term created by Frenchman Francis Lacassin used to describe characters in comic books inspired by Tarzan. A tarzanesque character resembles Tarzan in his physical resourcefulness, within a line of action that includes an adventurous life in the jungle, the gift of understanding and being understood by animals, contact with lost civilizations and courage combined with the ability to deal with nature. The creation of such characters may have been propitiated by the success that Tarzan had achieved since his appearance in literature in 1912, culminating with the release of daily comic strips in 1929, which paved the way for a genre that combined the allure of the unknown environment, the need for the archetypal characteristics of the hero and the popularity of access.
Nyoka the Jungle Girl is a fictional character created for the screen in the 1941 serial Jungle Girl, starring Frances Gifford as Nyoka Meredith. After the initial film, Nyoka appeared in comic books published by Fawcett, Charlton, and AC Comics.
William Murray is an American novelist, journalist, short story, and comic book writer. Much of his fiction has been published under pseudonyms. With artist Steve Ditko, he co-created the superhero Squirrel Girl.
Oriental Stories, later retitled The Magic Carpet Magazine, was an American pulp magazine published by Popular Fiction Co., and edited by Farnsworth Wright. It was launched in 1930 under the title Oriental Stories as a companion to Popular Fiction's Weird Tales, and carried stories with far eastern settings, including some fantasy. Contributors included Robert E. Howard, Frank Owen, and E. Hoffman Price. The magazine was not successful, and in 1932 publication was paused after the Summer issue. It was relaunched in 1933 under the title The Magic Carpet Magazine, with an expanded editorial policy that now included any story set in an exotic location, including other planets.
Tarzan and the Castaways is a collection of three stories by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the 24th and final in his series of twenty-four books about the jungle hero Tarzan. The title novella, and the two short stories were first published in pulp magazines in 1940 and 1941. The combined book was published first as a hardcover by Canaveral Press in early 1965, and as a paperback by Ballantine Books in July 1965.
Jungle Girl is a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, set in a forgotten kingdom in the jungles of Cambodia.
Adventure was an American pulp magazine that was first published in November 1910 by the Ridgway company, a subsidiary of the Butterick Publishing Company. Adventure went on to become one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed of all the American pulp magazines. The magazine had 881 issues. Its first editor was Trumbull White. He was succeeded in 1912 by Arthur Sullivant Hoffman (1876–1966), who edited the magazine until 1927.
Henry James O'Brien Bedford-Jones was a Canadian-American historical, adventure fantasy, science fiction, crime and Western writer who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1908.
Tarzan is a fictional character, a feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer.
Tarzan is a series of 24 adventure novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) and published between 1912 and 1966, followed by several novels either co-written by Burroughs, or officially authorized by his estate. There are also two works written by Burroughs especially for children that are not considered part of the main series.
Joseph Allan Elphinstone Dunn, best known as J. Allan Dunn, was one of the high-producing writers of the American pulp magazines. He published well over a thousand stories, novels, and serials from 1914 to 1941. He first made a name for himself in Adventure. At the request of Adventure editor Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, Dunn wrote Barehanded Castaways, a novel about people trapped on a desert island which was intended to avoid the usual cliches of such stories. Barehanded Castaways was serialised in 1921 and was well received by Adventure's readers. Well over half of his output appeared in Street & Smith pulps, including People's, Complete Story Magazine, and Wild West Weekly. Dunn wrote over a thousand stories. He wrote approximately 470 stories for Wild West Weekly alone. His main genres were adventure and western; although he did write a number of detective stories, most of them appearing in Detective Fiction Weekly and Dime Detective. Dunn wrote The Treasure of Atlantis, a science fiction story about survivals from Atlantis living in the Brazilian jungle. The Treasure of Atlantis was published in All-Around Magazine in 1916 and later reprinted in 1970. He was a specialist in South Sea stories, and pirate stories. He also published a lot of juvenile fiction; including many stories for Boys' Life, primarily in the 1920s. A number of his novel-length stories were reprinted in hardbound, some under the pen name "Joseph Montague" for Street & Smith's Chelsea House imprint; many of his books were issued in the United Kingdom. His stories were frequently syndicated in newspapers, both in America and around the world, making him, for a time, a very widely known author.
Amazing Stories Annual was a pulp magazine which published a single issue in July 1927. It was edited by Hugo Gernsback, and featured the first publication of The Master Mind of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which had been rejected by several other magazines, perhaps because the plot included a satire on religious fundamentalism. The other stories in Amazing Stories Annual were reprints, including two stories by A. Merritt, and one by H.G. Wells. The magazine sold out, and its success led Gernsback to launch Amazing Stories Quarterly the following year.
Thrilling Adventures was a monthly American pulp magazine published from 1931 to 1943.
Short Stories was an American fiction magazine published between 1890 and 1959.
Lewis Patrick Greene (1891–1971), who usually wrote under the name L. Patrick Greene, was an English writer of adventure stories.
Western Story Magazine was a pulp magazine published by Street & Smith, which ran from 1919 to 1949. It was the first of numerous pulp magazines devoted to Western fiction. In its heyday, Western Story Magazine was one of the most successful pulp magazines; in 1921 the magazine was selling over half a million copies each issue. The headquarters were located in New York City.
Tarzan: Return to Pal-ul-don is a novel written by Will Murray featuring Edgar Rice Burroughs's jungle hero Tarzan. It is the first volume in The Wild Adventures of Tarzan, a series of new works authorized and licensed by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. It was first published by Altus Press in June 2015 in trade paperback and ebook.