The Classic Era Of American Pulp Magazines

The era between the wars in America was on of dramatic change and uncertainty, a time of sexual liberation, Prohibition, organized crime and the Great Depression. At such times of flux people look to escapism and fantasy to fill out their humdrum and troubled lives. Along with movies and radio, came the spectacular rise of the pulp magazines.

The period between the World Wars—the era of sexual liberation, Prohibition, the rise of organized crime, and the Great Depression—was also the classic era of American pulp magazines, the subject of this fascinating volume. Pulps, with their lurid color covers depicting the thrills of sex and violence, and with stories to match inside, fuelled America’s dreams—and nightmares. For a few cents they offered everything young men wanted: sex, action, adventure. But they also fostered the talents of some of the greatest popular writers of the century—Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Dashiell Hammett, among others—and virtually invented the genres of science fiction and hard-boiled crime. From the cheap thrills of the “hot” and “spicy” pulps and the sexual sadism of the “shudder” pulps to the weird worlds of the fantasy, sci-fi, and horror pulps, this book displays their art and tells their history, capturing the original magazines in all their sleazy, sensational glory.

From the dime novels of the Civil War era to the pulp magazines of the early 20th century to modern paperbacks, lurid fiction has provided thrilling escapism for the masses. Cranking out formulaic stories of melodrama, crime and mild erotica--often by uncredited authors focused more on volume than quality--publishers realized high profits playing to low tastes. Estimates put pulp magazine circulation in the 1930s at 30 million monthly. This vast body of "disposable literature" has received little critical attention, in large part because much of it has been lost--the cheaply made books were either discarded after reading or soon disintegrated. Covering the history of pulp literature from 1850 through 1960, the author describes how sensational tales filled a public need and flowered during the evolving social conditions of the Industrial Revolution.

The term pulp fiction has always had a certain resonance; but it is the artwork--bold, energized, dramatic, garishly colorful, and frequently grotesque--that has made pulp magazines memorable to so many people. Pulp Art is the groundbreaking--and ultimate--book on one of America's most important and spectacular forms of illustration art. At last, preserved in this volume are most of the still-existing originals created for the pulp covers, never before seen in all their sharply focused, vibrantly colored brilliance. Robert Lesser, a pioneering collector of this work and an expert on American popular culture, has assembled a gallery of these now-priceless originals. The dynamically pulp-flavored text is a complete historical survey of the pulps and their most important cover artists--Virgil Finlay, J. Allen St. John, Rafael de Soto, Hannes Bok, George and Jerome Rozen, Frank R. Paul, and many others. Also offered are critical discussions of individual paintings, as well as the major themes of the pulp magazines.

During the pulp era - roughly the first five decades of the 20th century - more than one thousand all-fiction magazines reached the nation's newsstands, if only for a single issue. Of that number, just a couple dozen attained any reputation for literary quality, and fewer than half that many regularly published stories considered to be on a par with those accepted by the prestigious "slick" magazines. The top periodicals in the field - ADVENTURE, ARGOSY, BLUE BOOK, SHORT STORIES, THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, and a few others - were edited and packaged with loving care and consistently reflected the best that rough-paper magazines had to offer. And for decades American readers, ravenous for escapist entertainment, devoured them in weekly or monthly intervals. PRIDE OF THE PULPS contains lengthy, in-depth surveys of the most prestigious all-fiction magazines. Considerably revised and expanded from their original appearances in the award-winning journal BLOOD 'N' THUNDER, these essays reflect scholarly devotion and fannish enthusiasm in equal measure. They chart the evolutions of ADVENTURE, SHORT STORIES, THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, and several other periodicals of comparable quality, noting the memorable authors, stories, and characters that paraded across their woodpulp pages, entertaining readers through two World Wars and a Great Depression. PRIDE OF THE PULPS, profusely illustrated with cover art and interior illustrations from the pulp magazines under consideration, is the first volume in BLOOD 'N' THUNDER PRESENTS, a series of book-length histories of vintage American popular culture as reflected in books, magazines, comic strips, radio dramas, and motion pictures.

Expanded edition covering the Adventure Magazine genre of Cold-War masculinity including new material wartime xenophobic American magazine articles and advertisements.

"The future of magazines? Murky. Their past? Glorious. How we got from there to here is told in this compelling history. It's thrilling, funny, disturbing, sad, and ultimately inspiring. And in these pages are broad and helpful hints on how we can return to glorious."---Richard B. Stolley, Founding Editor, People, and Senior Editorial Adviser, Time Inc. --Book Jacket.