Argosy (magazine)

Argosy

Cover of the April 1906 issue
Founder	Frank Munsey
Founded	1882
Final issue	2016

Argosy was an American magazine, founded in 1882 as The Golden Argosy, a children's weekly, edited by Frank Munsey and published by E. G. Rideout. Munsey took over as publisher when Rideout went bankrupt in 1883, and after many struggles made the magazine profitable. He shortened the title to The Argosy in 1888 and targeted an audience of men and boys with adventure stories. In 1894 he switched it to a monthly schedule and in 1896 he eliminated all non-fiction and started using cheap pulp paper, making it the first pulp magazine. Circulation had reached half a million by 1907, and remained strong until the 1930s. The name was changed to Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1920 after the magazine merged with All-Story Weekly, another Munsey pulp, and from 1929 it became just Argosy.

In 1925 Munsey died, and the publisher, the Frank A. Munsey Company, was purchased by William Dewart, who had worked for Munsey. By 1942 circulation had fallen to no more than 50,000, and after a failed effort to revive the magazine by including sensational non-fiction, it was sold that year to Popular Publications, another pulp magazine publisher. Popular converted it from pulp to slick format, and initially attempted to make it a fiction-only magazine, but gave up on this within a year. Instead it became a men's magazine, carrying fiction and feature articles aimed at men. Circulation soared and by the early 1950s was well over one million.

Early contributors included Horatio Alger, Oliver Optic, and G. A. Henty. During the pulp era, many famous writers appeared in Argosy, including O. Henry, James Branch Cabell, Albert Payson Terhune, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Erle Stanley Gardner, Zane Grey, Robert E. Howard, and Max Brand. Argosy was regarded as one of the most prestigious publications in the pulp market, along with Blue Book, Adventure and Short Stories. After the transition to slick format it continued to publish fiction, including science fiction by Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, and Ray Bradbury. From 1948 to 1958 it published a series by Gardner called "The Court of Last Resort" which examined the cases of dozens of convicts who maintained their innocence, and succeeding in overturning many of the convictions. NBC adapted the series for television in 1957.

Popular sold Argosy to David Geller in 1972, and in 1978 Geller sold it to the Filipacchi Group, which closed it at the end of the year. The magazine has been revived several times, most recently in 2016.