Short Stories (magazine)
Encyclopedia
Origin of Short Stories
Short Stories began its existence as a literary periodical, carrying work by Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
,
Emile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, Bret Harte
Bret Harte
Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.- Life and career :...
, Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
and Anna Katharine Green
Anna Katharine Green
Anna Katharine Green was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories.-Life and work:...
. The magazine advertised
itself with the slogan "Twenty-Five Stories for Twenty-Five Cents". After a few years,
Short Stories became dominated by reprinted fiction. The magazine was sold in
1904 and eventually purchased by Doubleday, Page and Company, which in 1910 transformed
Short Stories into a "quality pulp". The magazine's new editor,
Harry E. Maule, placed an emphasis on Short Stories carrying
well-written fiction; pulp magazine historian Robert Sampson states "For Short Stories, like
Adventure
Adventure (magazine)
Adventure magazine was first published in November 1910 as a monthly pulp magazine. Adventure went on become one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed of all the American pulp magazines...
and Blue Book
Blue Book (magazine)
Blue Book was a popular 20th-century American magazine with a lengthy 70-year run under various titles from 1905 to 1975.Launched as The Monthly Story Magazine, it was published under that title from May 1905 to August 1906 with a change to The Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine for issues from...
to follow, rose above the
expedient prose of rival magazines like ivory towers thrusting up from swampland".
Short Stories was initially known for publishing crime fiction
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
by authors including
Max Pemberton
Max Pemberton
Sir Max Pemberton was a popular British novelist, working mainly in the adventure and mystery genres. He was educated at St Albans School, Merchant Taylors' School, and Caius College, Cambridge...
and Thomas W. Hanshew
Thomas W. Hanshew
Thomas W. Hanshew was an American actor and writer, born in Brooklyn, N. Y. He went on the stage when only 16 years old, playing minor parts with Ellen Terry's company. Subsequently he played important roles with Clara Morris and Adelaide Neilson. Later he was associated with a publishing house...
.
Pulp Era
In the 1920s and 1930s, however, Short Stories was best known as a publisher ofWestern
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
stories, with many of the best-known Western fiction writers such as Clarence E. Mulford
Clarence E. Mulford
Clarence E. Mulford was the author of Hopalong Cassidy, written in 1904. He wrote it in Fryeburg, Maine, United States, and the many stories and 28 novels were followed by radio, feature film, television, and comic book versions. Clarence was born in Streator, Illinois. He died of complications...
, Max Brand
Max Brand
Frederick Faust, aka Max Brand|thumb|rightFrederick Schiller Faust was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns. Faust wrote mostly under pen names, but today is primarily known by only one, Max Brand...
,
Luke Short
Luke Short
Western frontiersman Luke L. Short was a noted gunfighter, who had worked as a farmer, cowboy, whiskey peddler, army scout, dispatch rider, gambler and saloon keeper at various times during the four decades of his life.- Early life :...
, Ernest Haycox
Ernest Haycox
Ernest James Haycox was a prolific American author of Western fiction.-Biography:Haycox was born in Portland, Oregon, to William James Haycox and the former Martha Burghardt on October 1, 1899...
, W. C. Tuttle, James B. Hendryx, Barry Scobee and B. M. Bower
B. M. Bower
Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy , best known by her pseudonym B. M...
appearing in its pages.
Short Stories also carried adventure fiction
Adventure novel
The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...
,such as "Northern
Northern (genre)
The Northern or Northwestern is an American and Canadian genre in literature and film made popular by the writings of Rex Beach and Zane Grey. It is similar to the Western genre but the action occurs in the Canadian North and typically features Mounties instead of, for example, cowboys or sheriffs...
" tales
set in the Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
,and adventures in the South Seas
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
or Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...
. The magazine's writers in the adventure genre included George Allan England
George Allan England
George Allan England was an American writer and explorer, best known for his speculative and science fiction. He attended Harvard University and later in life unsuccessfully ran for Governor of Maine. England was a socialist and many of his works have socialist themes.-Life:England was born in...
, H. Bedford-Jones
H. Bedford-Jones
Henry James O'Brien Bedford-Jones was a Canadian historical, adventure fantasy, science fiction, crime and Western writer who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1908. After being encouraged to try writing by his friend, writer William Wallace Cook, Bedford-Jones began writing dime...
, J. Allan Dunn
J. Allan Dunn
Joseph Allan Dunn , best known as J. Allan Dunn, was one of the high-producing writers of the American pulp magazines. He published well over a thousand stories, novels, and serials from 1914–41. He first made a name for himself in Adventure...
, L. Patrick Greene
Lewis Patrick Greene
Lewis Patrick Greene , who usually wrote under thename L. Patrick Greene, was an English writer of adventure stories.Greene was born in England. He spent several years in Rhodesia working...
(stories set in Africa), J.D. Newsom
(with light-hearted Foreign Legion
French Foreign Legion in popular culture
Beyond its reputation of the French Foreign Legion as an elite unit often embroiled in serious fighting, its recruitment practices have also led to a romantic view of it being a place for a wronged man to leave behind his old life to start a new one, yet also being full of scoundrels and men...
stories),
William Wirt (who chronicled the exploits of a mercenary
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
, Jimmie Cordie) and George F. Worts (who
wrote about South Sea adventures).
Thriller writers Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals....
and Sax Rohmer
Sax Rohmer
Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward , better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr...
had stories in the magazine in this
period, as did Vincent Starrett
Vincent Starrett
Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett , known as Vincent Starrett, was an American writer and newspaperman.- Biography :...
, who wrote about private investigator Jimmie Lavender
for Short Stories.
In addition to fiction, Maule also created "The Story Teller's Circle", a forum
for readers to write in and discuss issues (similar to "The Camp-Fire" department
in Adventure magazine). Edgar Franklin Wittmack
Edgar Franklin Wittmack
Edgar Franklin Wittmack was an illustrator and cover artist for many of the most popular magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. His covers, just as the artwork of his contemporary, Norman Rockwell, were usually created as oil paintings. Where Rockwell specialized in the humorous aspects of small town...
, Remington Schuyler and Nick Eggenhofer all painted several
covers for Short Stories.
Maule edited the magazine for almost two decades.Between 1929 and 1932 Roy De S. Horn
served as editor; Maule returned as editor in 1932.
In 1936, Maule was succeeded in this role by Dorothy McIlwraith. The
next year, Doubleday sold the publication to an new owner, Short Stories, Inc. (McIlwraith would also
edit Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
when Short Stories, Inc. purchased that magazine).
During the 1940s, writers such as Frank Gruber
Frank Gruber
Frank Gruber may refer to:*Frank Gruber , American writer*Frank Gruber , entrepreneur and new media journalist...
, Arthur O. Friel
Arthur O. Friel
Arthur Olney Friel was one of the most popular writers for the adventure pulps. He began appearing in Adventure magazine in 1919 with stories set in the Amazon jungle featuring the characters Pedro and Lourenço, two rubber-industry workers who undergo harrowing experiences in the impenetrable...
, Theodore Roscoe
Theodore Roscoe
Theodore Roscoe was an American biographer and writer of adventure, fantasy novels and stories. Roscoe's stories appeared in pulp magazines including Argosy, Wings, Flying Stories, Far East Adventure Stories, Fight Stories, Action Stories and Adventure. A collection of his stories, The Wonderful...
and
Carl Jacobi
Carl Richard Jacobi
Carl Richard Jacobi was an American author. He wrote short stories in the horror, fantasy, science fiction and crime genres for the pulp magazine market.-Biography:...
appeared in Short Stories.
A British edition of Short Stories was published between 1920 and 1959; it merged with
the UK version of the West magazine in 1954 and was known as
Short Stories Incorporating West. The September 1950 issue of Short Stories carried Robert A. Heinlein's
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
story
Destination Moon
Destination Moon (story)
"Destination Moon" is a short story by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, first published in Short Stories Magazine, September 1950.The story is an adaptation of his screenplay for the film Destination Moon in 1950...
, an adaptation of the film
Destination Moon (film)
Destination Moon is an American science fiction feature film produced by George Pal, who later produced When Worlds Collide, The War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine. Pal commissioned the script by James O'Hanlon and Rip Van Ronkel...
.
This was unusual as Short Stories rarely published science fiction.
Decline
Like other pulps, the advent of World War Two, and the arrival of paperbacks and television had anegative effect on Short Stories; circulation figures plummeted and by the 1950s the magazine
was dominated by reprints.
Despite the efforts of new editor M.D. Gregory and his associate editor, Frank Belknap Long
Frank Belknap Long
Frank Belknap Long was a prolific American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to...
,
Short Stories ceased publication in 1959.