Tip Top Weekly was a magazine, published by Street & Smith, which ran for more than 800 issues. It began April 19, 1896 with an August 12, 1912 title change to New Tip Top Weekly. Making a 1915 transition from a story-paper tabloid to a standard pulp magazine format, it was retitled Tip Top Semi-Monthly and then became Wide Awake Magazine from December 10, 1915 to June 10, 1916.
Promoted as "an ideal publication for American Youth," this magazine featured several fictional heroes but was mainly devoted to the ongoing adventures of student Frank Merriwell, who began at a fictional New England academy and then moved on to Yale. Adept in sports, Merriwell eventually became an international adventurer.
It was edited by Frederick Tilney from September 1896 to March 6, 1915 with William George Patten (as Gilbert Patten) taking over the editorial reins from March 10, 1915 to June 10, 1916. Patten wrote the Merriwell stories under the pseudonym Burt L. Standish.
Merriwell's adventures continued decades later as a comic book and a radio serial.
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 until around 1955. 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.
The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term dime novel has been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, referring to story papers, five- and ten-cent weeklies, "thick book" reprints, and sometimes early pulp magazines. The term was used as a title as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp magazine Western Dime Novels. In the modern age, the term dime novel has been used to refer to quickly written, lurid potboilers, usually as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized but superficial literary work.
Joseph Louis De Grasse was a Canadian film director. Born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, he was the elder brother of actor Sam De Grasse.
Puck was the first successful humor magazine in the United States of colorful cartoons, caricatures and political satire of the issues of the day. It was founded in 1876 as a German-language publication by Joseph Keppler, an Austrian immigrant cartoonist. Puck's first English-language edition was published in 1877, covering issues like New York City's Tammany Hall, presidential politics, and social issues of the late 19th century to the early 20th century.
Richard Harding Davis was an American journalist and writer of fiction and drama, known foremost as the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish–American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I. His writing greatly assisted the political career of Theodore Roosevelt. He also played a major role in the evolution of the American magazine. His influence extended to the world of fashion, and he is credited with making the clean-shaven look popular among men at the turn of the 20th century.
Argosy was an American magazine, founded in 1882 as The Golden Argosy, a children's weekly, edited by Frank Munsey and published by E. G. Rideout. Munsey took over as publisher when Rideout went bankrupt in 1883, and after many struggles made the magazine profitable. He shortened the title to The Argosy in 1888 and targeted an audience of men and boys with adventure stories. In 1894 he switched it to a monthly schedule and in 1896 he eliminated all non-fiction and started using cheap pulp paper, making it the first pulp magazine. Circulation had reached half a million by 1907, and remained strong until the 1930s. The name was changed to Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1920 after the magazine merged with All-Story Weekly, another Munsey pulp, and from 1929 it became just Argosy.
Edward L. Stratemeyer was an American publisher, writer of children's fiction, and founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. He was one of the most prolific writers in the world, producing in excess of 1,300 books himself, selling in excess of 500 million copies. He also created many well-known fictional book series for juveniles, including The Rover Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, The Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew series, many of which sold millions of copies and remain in publication. On Stratemeyer's legacy, Fortune wrote: "As oil had its Rockefeller, literature had its Stratemeyer."
Ranger was a weekly British comics periodical published by Fleetway Publications from 18 September 1965 to 18 June 1966. Intended as an educational publication, the cover described it as "The National Boys' Magazine" and the content mixed comic strips with a much larger quotient of factual articles than most other Fleetway children's titles of the time. Ranger lasted 40 issues before being merged with Fleetway's fellow educational title Look and Learn in 1966.
Frank Andrew Munsey was an American newspaper and magazine publisher, banker, political financier and author. He was born in Mercer, Maine, but spent most of his life in New York City. The village of Munsey Park, New York, is named for him, along with The Munsey Building in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, at the southeast corner of North Calvert and East Fayette Streets.
William George "Gilbert" Patten was a writer of dime novels and is best known as author of the Frank Merriwell stories, with the pen name Burt L. Standish.
Frank Merriwell is a fictional character appearing in a series of novels and short stories by Gilbert Patten, who wrote under the pseudonym Burt L. Standish. The character appeared in over 300 dime novels between 1896 and 1930, numerous radio dramas in 1934 and again from 1946 through 1949, a comic strip from 1928 through 1936, a comic book Frank Merriwell At Yale, and a 12-chapter serialized film in 1936. The book series was relaunched in 1965, but only three books were published.
Joseph Alexander Altsheler was an American newspaper reporter, editor and author of popular juvenile historical fiction. He was a prolific writer, and produced fifty novels and at least fifty-three short stories. Thirty-two of his novels were part of his seven series:
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.
Munsey's Magazine was an American magazine founded by Frank Munsey. Originally launched in 1889 as Munsey's Weekly, a humorous magazine, edited by John Kendrick Bangs, it was not successful, and by late 1891 had lost $100,000. Munsey converted it to a general illustrated monthly in October of that year, retitled Munsey's Magazine and priced at twenty-five cents. Richard Titherington became the editor, and remained in that role for the rest of the magazine's existence. In 1893 Munsey reduced the price to ten cents : this brought him into conflict with the American News Company, which had a near-monopoly on magazine distribution, as they were unwilling to handle the magazine at the cost Munsey asked for. Munsey started his own distribution company and was quickly successful: the first issue at ten cents began with a print run of 20,000 copies but eventually sold 60,000, and within a year circulation had risen to over a quarter of a million issues.
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.
Roy Larcom McCardell was an American journalist, scenarist, humorist and writer.
The Central Press Association was American newspaper syndication company based in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in business from 1910 to 1971. Originally independent, it was a subsidiary of King Features Syndicate from 1930 onwards. At its peak, the Central Press supplied features, columns, comic strips, and photographs to more than 400 newspapers and 12 million daily readers. Notable comic strips that originated with Central Press include Brick Bradford, Etta Kett, and Muggs McGinnis.
Frank Tousey (1853–1902) was among the top five publishers of dime novels in the late 19th-century and early 20th-century. Based in New York, his sensationalism drew a large audience of youth, hungry for scenes of daring and tormented heroes and damsels in distress. Of particular notice in his approach to the 'blood and thunder' genre were the vivid cover illustrations of his dime novels, which were consistently larger and more thrilling than previous publications. Although focused on fictional weeklies, Tousey managed a variety of materials over time, including some handbooks, gossip sheets, and even a newspaper on current events in the Spanish–American War.
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