Pulps

I'm reading "Pulp Culture:  The Art of Fiction Magazines."  Really interesting.  It's primarily concerned with the covers and their art - there are a great number of cover reproductions with the artist listed, and a value scale.  Some of the art is very good, and a lot of it is violent and disconcerting.  There are, of course, a plethora of underclothed damsels-in-distress, and, as the author points out, a great many large green hands reaching and grabbing.

The pulps (named for their cheap woodpulp paper) came after story papers and dime novels, and were printed along side mainstream books, comic books, and the "slicks," magazines printed on glossy paper. The first pulp was "Argosy" in 1896. "They [pulps] reached their peak in the '20s and '30s, declined in popularity after World War II, and finally died in the early'50s, their readership split among those preferring the even more sensational comic books, the convenience of paperbacks, or the soap operas, dramas, and comedies television provided for free." (Pulp Culture, p.17)

According to "Pulp Culture," the pulps overall were popular and wildly varied. "At it's heydey in the teens, "Argosy" had a circulation of 700,000, the high-water mark for any pulp." (p.21) "...[B]y the time the pulps finally died, more than 1200 different titles had appeared...." (p.30) They covered a huge range of topics from love to the railroad, and there was a pulp for every member of the family. Sort of like manga in Japan.

Big name authors (or authors who would become big names) wrote for the pulps - Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ron E Howard, Earle Stanley Gardner, Zane Grey, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard (westerns first, then mystery), Louis L'Amour, Ray Bradbury, L. Ron Hubbard.  The pulps were the trying ground for many authors who learned their craft there and then moved on to the slicks or books. 

And, of course, science fiction as we know it was born in the pulps.