Wednesday, September 25, 2013

New Issues: Adventure and Blue Book (9/25/2013)

The Pulp Magazines Project has added 5 new issues of 2 classic pulp titles to its full-text digital archive. These include the Jun. 15, 1935 and May 1949 issues of Adventure, feat. Cleopatra's Promise, by prolific pulp author Talbot Mundy (Jun. 15, 1935); and the May 1936, Mar. 1937, and Jul. 1938 issues of Blue Book, feat. short stories by H. Bedford Jones, along with William L. Chester's Tarzan-inspired series, Kioga. There are now a total of 235 full-text magazines available on the site.
For news and updates to the site, along with a complete list of issues posted, check out our News & Updates page here.

For more information on the history of these classic pulp titles, check out Patrick Belk's "Adventure Magazine: America's No. 1 Pulp"; Mike Ashley's "The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction"; and R.D. Mullen's "From Standard Magazines to Pulps & Big Slicks".

And for October, more SF!

Sunday, September 15, 2013

New Issues/ Titles: Western Pulp Magazines (9/15/2013)

The Pulp Magazines Project has added 6 new Western pulp titles (8 new complete issues) to its full-text digital archive. These include All Western Magazine  (Apr.-Jun. 1950; feat. Ernest Haycox, The Feudists); Exciting Western  (Sept. 1947; feat. W.C. Tuttle, Alias Adam Jones); Fifteen Western Tales (Jan. 1953); Masked Rider Western (Winter 1945 & Nov. 1950); Ten Story Western (Dec. 1949; feat. Tom Roan, Yellow Devil Starves Tonight!); and Two-Gun Western (Novels) (Apr. 1942 & Nov. 1955).
For more information on the history of Western pulp magazines, check out John A. Dinan's The Pulp Western: A Popular History of the Western Fiction Magazine in America. For an excellent memoir on writing for the Western pulps, see Pulp Writer: Twenty Years of Writing for the American Grub Street, by Paul S. Powers.

Cheers, pardners.

Monday, August 26, 2013

New Issues: Black Mask & Top-Notch (8/20 & 8/25/2013)

With the start of the new semester, the Pulp Magazines Project returns with regular monthly updates to its digital archive. In the final weeks of August, we've added to the project's growing collection of pre-1923 pulps with new issues of The Black Mask and Top-Notch Magazine:
Included are the Nov. 1920 and Aug. 1922 issues of The Black Mask---which feature Murray Leinster's "The Vault" (Aug. 1922)---and the Feb. 1912, Mar. 1913, and May 1 1915 issues of Street & Smith's Top-Notch Magazine---featuring Part I of Johnston McCulley's Force Inscrutable (Mar. 1913).

Enjoy.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

New Issues/ Histories: Black Mask, Dime Mystery, et al

Publishing legends The Black Mask (1920), Weird Tales (1923), and Amazing Stories (1926) are considered so "extremely rare and valuable" that the U.S. Library of Congress houses its collection of 277 issues in Washington, D.C.'s Rare Book and Special Collections Division---along with the personal libraries of Presidents, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, and one of only three known perfect copies of the Gutenberg Bible. With its latest addition of 4 issues of The Black Mask (Aug. & Sept. 1920; Dec. 1921; and Apr. 1922), the Pulp Magazines Project has made all 3 classic titles available together---for the first time---in high-quality, cover-to-cover digital editions.


Also available at the Pulp Magazines Project, new issues of the iconic "weird menace" pulp, Dime Mystery Magazine (Apr. 1938 and Sept. 1946); Adventure (Jul. 1, 1928; feat. Walt Coburn's "The Man Who Hated Himself"); Western Story (Jul. 27, 1940); Detective Story (May 1938; feat. Zorro-creator Johnston McCulley's "Thubway Tham's Thothial Thecurity"); and histories of both The Black Mask (E.R. Hagemann; UCLA) and Dime Mystery Magazine (Emily Sisler; University of West Florida).




Saturday, April 13, 2013

New Issues/ Contexts/ Histories (4/13/2013): The ‘Girlie’ Pulps!

In the 1920s and '30s, The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (est. 1873) prosecuted a long war against the so-called "girlie" pulps, a burgeoning field of mildly risqué pulp-paper magazines featuring sex-themed stories, scantily clad women, and sometimes nude photography.

In 1925, the organization attacked as indecent the magazines Artists and Models and Art Lovers' Magazine.

In 1930, the NYSSV forced pulp publisher Harold Hersey to suppress depictions of violence and lawlessness in his new line of gang pulps.

In 1934, the organization raided magazine shops to confiscate four new magazines with the titillating titles Real Boudoir TalesReal Temptation TalesReal Forbidden Sweets, and Real French Capers....

For 2013, let's hope it all goes better for these long lost, and much maligned step-children of popular 20th century print culture history:


The Pulp Magazines Project has posted 8 new scans, feat. representative issues of the snappy, spicy, & girlie varieties (shown above) of semi-slick or pulp-paper magazines from the 1930s and 1940s.

They include 10 Story Book (Jul. 1934), Follies (Winter 1933), Gay Life Stories (c. 1939), Hollywood Nights (May 1937), La Paree (Nov. 1935), Night Life Tales (Winter 1940), Pep Stories (Apr. 1932), and Spicy Stories (Sept. 1936).

To access these issues, just click here.

Also available now at the Pulp Magazines Project, from Lauren Gibson (The University of West Florida), a history of George T. Delacorte's "I Confess" (1922 - 1932).

And from Beau Collier (Darwination Scans), an illustrated history of the "girlie" pulps (1912 - 1946). Just see "Birth of the Girlie Pulps."

The Pulp Magazines Project wishes to thank Pulpscans and Digital Pulp Preservation.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

British SF magazines, 1937-46

Tales of Wonder vol. 1, no. 1 (World's Work, Surrey; June 1937)
Fantasy vol. 1, no. 2 (George Newnes, London; Spring 1939)
New Worlds vol. 1, no. 1 (Pendulum, London; Summer 1946)