pulpsandmags

This section of the web site is just sort of an extra added attraction. The truth of the matter is that people who collect vintage paperbacks are usually also interested in early pulp magazines, digests and pre-1939 paper-covered books.

It's an important section for those of you who actually read all this tripe on the right side of these index pages of the web site. Vintage paperbacks had their publishing origins in magazines. For example, here you'll see copies of Thrilling Love, Thrilling Western, Thrilling Adventure, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Popular Love, Popular Sports, Popular Western, Detective Novel, and many more of the "Thrilling" lineup of pulp magazines. All were published by Ned Pines, who also started the Popular Library series of paperback books.

The first portion of this section is from my own small, hodgepodge collection. Having said that, I should acknowledge that some of the publications were originally in the collection of Bob Harper, a vintage paperback aficionado from Houston, Texas.

Contributors of pulp cover scans have been given their own pages. Many thanks to those who have chosen to share this most interesting portion of American literary history with others. Because of differences in the quality of the magazine covers, I have not attempted to cull out duplicate scans, like I do with the paperbacks.

How to Read the Magazine Entries:

Click an image and look at the web address of the scan to determine its date. The dates will be shown year first. So, for example, "argosy19250110" should be read: 1925, January 10th. "famousfantasticmys194406" was printed: 1944, June. Click on the image in the upper left corner of this page, and find that it was printed 194007: 1940, July.

"The Lost Artwork"

Unless you actually own some of these magazines, it's difficult to understand how delicate they are. Invariably, no matter how careful I am, when I remove one from its protective plastic bag and read a story, I find myself covered with little pieces of chipped pulp. They have not aged well over the past sixty or seventy or eighty years.

For that reason, when collectors scan or take pictures of them, they tend to concentrate ONLY on the covers; and interior artwork, such as the drawing above by W.H. Hinton for Amazing Stories (May 1951), has become lost in time. Another Amazing Stories illustration, this one by Virgil Finlay, graced the story Black Angels Have No Wings in the August 1952 edition.
In the coming years, I hope to go through my collection and scan some of the better illustrations. That process will NOT be conducive to the magazines' good health, but I believe these pictures should be made available to the public. I promise to be as gentle as I can.

The Pulp and Mags section was updated in April, 2010