The Argosy, Vol. 39

This page opening—not a painted cover but a letterpress title and chapter head—represents *The Argosy* before Frank Munsey converted it to all-fiction pulp format in 1882–96. What survives here is pure typography: the bold gothic masthead, the date line, and the chapter heading for *The Mystery of Allan Grale*, Chapter XIII, its prose already trafficking in lodging-house intrigue, missing gentlemen, and forged postmarks. *The Argosy* is the direct ancestor of every pulp magazine that followed. Printed on cheap wood-pulp stock and priced for mass readership, it pioneered serialized genre fiction—adventure, mystery, romance—establishing the commercial model that later magazines would dress in lurid painted covers and hand to the comic book.