All-Story Magazine

''The All-Story Magazine'' was a pulp magazine founded in 1905 and published by Frank Munsey. The editor was Robert H. Davis; Thomas Newell Metcalf also worked as a managing editor for the magazine. It was published monthly until March 1914, and then switched to a weekly schedule. Munsey merged it with ''The'' ''Cavalier'', another of his pulp magazines, in May 1914, and the title changed to ''All-Story Cavalier Weekly'' for a year. In 1920 it was merged with Munsey's '' Argosy''; the combined magazine was retitled ''Argosy All-Story Weekly''.

Many well-known writers appeared in ''All-Story'', including the mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart and the Western writer Max Brand. The most famous contributor to the magazine was Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose first sale, '' Under the Moons of Mars'', appeared in ''All-Story'' in 1912. This was the start of his Barsoom science fiction series set on Mars; the next three novels in the series also appeared in ''All-Story''. In 1912 ''All-Story'' printed Burroughs's ''Tarzan of the Apes'', and more stories of Tarzan followed, along with two instalments of another of Burroughs's series, about Pellucidar, a land inside the Earth. The first appearance of Zorro, the vigilante, was in ''All-Story'' in 1919, in Johnston McCulley's novel ''The Curse of Capistrano''. Many other science fiction and fantasy stories appeared over the life of the magazine. Starting in 1939 some of the stories from ''All-Story'' were included in '' Famous Fantastic Mysteries'' and ''Fantastic Novels'', both of which were created as vehicles for reprints from the Munsey magazines.

Publication history

In 1882, Frank Munsey launched '' The Golden Argosy'', a children's weekly magazine. The title changed to just ''The Argosy'' in 1888, and in 1896 Munsey switched to using coarse pulp paper, and printing only fiction, thus launching the first pulp magazine. It was immediately successful. Other publishers brought out competing magazines, such as Street & Smith's ''The Popular Magazine'' in 1903, and Story-Press's '' The Monthly Story Magazine'' in 1905. As the competition grew, Munsey decided to add another pulp title.Ashley (1985), pp. 103–109.

Munsey launched ''The All-Story Magazine'' in January 1905 on a monthly schedule with Robert H. Davis as the editor, and Davis hired Thomas Newell Metcalf to work for him as managing editor.Moskowitz (1970), pp. 318–319. Munsey had hired Davis early in 1904 to work on the '' New York Sunday News'', but sold it in April of that year, and Davis had been fiction editor of ''Munsey's Magazine'' since then.

In March 1914 ''All-Story'''s schedule switched to weekly, and in May of that year it was combined with another Munsey pulp, '' The Cavalier'', under the title ''All-Story Cavalier Weekly''. Davis and Metcalf had each dealt with some ''All-Story'' contributors up to that point, but thereafter Davis took over working with the writers who had been Metcalf's responsibility. The following year the "''Cavalier''" was dropped, and it continued as ''All-Story Weekly'' again until 1920, when it was merged into ''The Argosy.'' The combined magazine was retitled ''Argosy All-Story Weekly'', and retained that name until 1929.

Contents and reception

The first issue included the first instalments of five novels, including W. Bert Foster's ''When Time Slipped a Cog'', about a man who discovers a year of his life has passed that he cannot remember. Two of the short stories were science fiction as well: Howard R. Garis's "The Ghost at Box 13", and Margaret Prescott Montague's "The Great Sleep Tanks". The May issue reprinted Garrett P. Serviss's short novel ''The Moon Metal'' (originally published in book form in 1900), about a new fiscal standard that replaced gold with a metal from the moon. Serviss also appeared in 1909 with ''A Columbus of Space'', serialized in the January to June issues, which science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz commented "caused some to class Serviss as the equal of Jules Verne".

Mary Roberts Rinehart's first story, "A Gasoline Road Agent", appeared in the April 1905 issue. Davis encouraged her efforts, and her first novel, ''The Circular Staircase'', was serialized in ''All-Story'' from November 1906 to March 1907. In book form the novel later became the first major success of her career.Moskowitz (1970), p. 320. Max Brand, one of the most prolific of all pulp writers, sold his first Western novel, ''The Untamed'', to ''All-Story''; it was serialized starting in the December 1918 issue. Ray Cummings, another prolific pulp author, began his career with "The Girl in the Golden Atom" in the March 15, 1919, issue of ''All-Story''; it was one of the most popular stories he ever wrote. Other ''All-Story'' writers included Rex Stout, later a well-known mystery writer; Western writer Raymond S. Spears; science fiction writer Murray Leinster; horror and fantasy writers Tod Robbins and Perley Poore Sheehan,Hulse (2013), pp. 19–29. and W. Adolphe Roberts, a Jamaican writer who later became a leader of Jamaica's independence movement. ''All-Story'' also published poetry, including work by Djuna Barnes, later known as an important figure in modernist and lesbian literature. Eldred Kurtz Means's "Tickfall" stories, about black Americans in Louisiana, began in ''Cavalier'' and moved to ''All-Story'' when the two magazines merged. Johnston McCulley's Zorro series began with the serialization of ''The Curse of Capistrano'' in August and September 1919, and continued in ''Argosy'' after the magazines merged in 1920. Edwin Baird, later the founding editor of ''Weird Tales'', made his first sale to ''All-Story'' in 1906, and contributed several more over the life of the magazine.

The first issue's cover printed the words "Something New" in a script font on a red background. A picture of two cowboys appeared on the next issue. The third issue took over the cover for a declaration that the magazine had reached a circulation of 200,000, but thereafter artwork was used on every cover. Artists included Valentine Sandberg and F. X. Chamberlain. The cover illustrations did not at first have any relationship to the stories in the magazine.

John Clute, discussing the American pulp magazines in the first two decades of the twentieth century, has described ''All-Story'' and its companion, ''Argosy'', as "the most important pulps of their era."Clute (1995), p. 43.

Burroughs

The most important author discovered by ''All-Story'' was Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs was thirty-five years old in the summer of 1911, and unsuccessful in business. He began writing a novel in July of that year, "very surreptitiously" as he later recalled: "I was very much ashamed of my new vocation ... It seemed a foolish thing for a full grown man to be doing". By August he had completed enough of the story to send it to ''All-Story'' under the title "Dejah Thoris, Martian Princess", adding in his covering letter that the completed story would be three times the length of the 43,000 words he was submitting. Metcalf replied with guarded enthusiasm, asking for some cuts, and a total length of no more than 70,000 words. Metcalf bought the rewritten story in November for $400 (equivalent to $ in ); given the manuscript had taken four months of work, Burroughs was unimpressed at the pay rate. The story was serialized in ''All-Story'' from February to July 1912, titled '' Under the Moons of Mars''. This was the first of Burroughs's Barsoom stories ("Barsoom" being the name of the planet Mars in the series), an early and influential planetary romance. ''Darkness and Dawn'', by George Allan England, had been serialized in another Munsey magazine, ''The Cavalier'', starting in January that year, and science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz regards the appearance of these two stories as signalling the start of an era of popular science fiction love stories. Burroughs had intended the story to be printed under the pseudonym "Normal Bean", to indicate he was an ordinary person despite the fantastic nature of the story. The typesetter assumed it was an error and the story appeared as by "Norman Bean", leading Burroughs to give up the pseudonym and publish his subsequent work under his real name.

Burroughs's next submission to Metcalf was rejected, but in March 1912 Burroughs sent Metcalf a description of the novel he was working on, titled ''Tarzan of the Apes''; Metcalf was enthusiastic about the idea and promptly bought the manuscript when Burroughs submitted it in June. It appeared in the October 1912 issue of ''All-Story.'' The next three Barsoom novels appeared in ''All-Story'' over the next four years: ''The Gods of Mars'' was serialized from January to May 1913; '' The Warlord of Mars'' ran from December 1913 to March 1914, and '' Thuvia, Maid of Mars'' appeared in 1916. The second Tarzan book, ''The Return of Tarzan'', appeared in '' New Story Magazine'', but the series returned to ''All-Story'' for three of the later novels: '' The Beasts of Tarzan'', ''The Son of Tarzan'', and '' Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar'', and for some of the subsequent short stories in the series. Burroughs's Pellucidar series, about adventures inside a hollow Earth, also began in ''All-Story'', with '' At the Earth's Core'' and ''Pellucidar''. The initial rate of less than a cent per word that Burroughs received for his first sale began to increase: Metcalf agreed to a rate of two and a half cents per word (equivalent to $ in ), for everything he bought from Burroughs in 1914.

By the time ''All-Story'' merged with ''Argosy'' in the summer of 1920, almost two dozen stories and serialized novels by Burroughs had appeared in the magazine.Porges (1975), pp. 787–790. Burroughs's popularity led to a demand for similar stories, and to imitations.Ashley (1976), pp. 17–18. Science fiction historian Mike Ashley suggests that this was the reason for the increasing number of science fiction stories that began to appear, from writers such as Austin Hall, Homer Eon Flint, and Junius B. Smith. Hall's "Almost Immortal" appeared in 1916, along with short science fiction tales by John U. Giesy, J. B. Smith, Charles B. Stilson, and Victor Rousseau. The following year ''All-Story'' published Abraham Merritt's first story, "Through the Dragon Glass". Merritt was one of the most popular pulp writers, and in 1918 two more of his stories appeared: ''The People of the Pit'', and "The Moon Pool". "The Conquest of the Moon Pool", a sequel to the latter story, followed in 1919, and both were well received. When Hugo Gernsback launched ''Amazing Stories'', the first science fiction magazine, in 1926, he soon discovered that the technically oriented science fiction he preferred did not sell as well as more fantastic stories, and he responded by reprinting "The Moon Pool" in the May 1927 issue.Ashley, ''Time Machines'', pp. 54–56.

In 2006, a copy of the October 1912 issue of ''All-Story'', featuring the first appearance of the character Tarzan in any medium, sold for $59,750 (equivalent to $ in ) in an auction held by Heritage Auctions of Dallas.

Bibliographic details

The magazine's title was originally ''The All-Story Magazine''. This was shortened to ''The All-Story'' in June 1911, and then changed to ''All-Story Weekly'' when it switched from monthly to weekly publication with the March 7, 1914, issue. From May 16, 1914, to May 8, 1915, it was titled ''All-Story Cavalier Weekly'' as a result of the merger with ''The'' ''Cavalier'', and for the rest of its run, until the July 17, 1920, issue, it was ''All-Story Weekly'' again.

In 1929 Munsey's reorganized two of their magazines: ''Munsey's Magazine'' became part of a new love story magazine titled ''All-Story'', and ''Argosy All-Story Weekly'' became simply ''Argosy''. The new ''All-Story'' was soon retitled ''All-Story Love Stories'' and continued publication until 1955.

Reprint magazines and anthologies

The long history of the Munsey magazines meant that by the 1930s there were many stories readers had heard of but could no longer obtain. In response to reader requests, Munsey's launched '' Famous Fantastic Mysteries'' in 1939 to reprint old stories from both ''Argosy'' and ''All-Story Weekly''. The following year Munsey's launched ''Fantastic Novels'', another reprint magazine, to make longer stories available without needing to serialize them in ''Famous Fantastic Mysteries''. ''Fantastic Novels'' only lasted five issues before being discontinued in 1941, but ''Famous Fantastic Mysteries'' lasted for 81 issues, ceasing publication with the June 1953 issue.Clareson (1985a), pp. 211–216.Clareson (1985b), pp. 241–244. Popular Publications, which had acquired ''Famous Fantastic Mysteries'' from Munsey's in 1942, brought back ''Fantastic Novels'' for another 20 issues between 1948 and 1951.

In 1970 Sam Moskowitz edited a collection of stories from the Munsey magazines titled ''Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912–1920''. Seven of the nine stories included had originally appeared in ''All-Story''.Moskowitz (1970), pp. vii–viii.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:All-Story Magazine
Defunct men's magazines published in the United States
Defunct magazines published in the United States
Magazines established in 1905
Magazines disestablished in 1920
Pulp magazines