The Argosy, Vol. 51, No. 2

A wood-engraved interior illustration—typical of *The Argosy*'s pre-chromolithograph era—depicts a hospital or convent ward at night. A nun in full black habit and white coif stands at the foot of an iron-framed bed, while a luminous angelic figure hovers in the shadowed upper right, suggesting a vision or supernatural visitation. The scene signals the sentimental-Gothic fiction that filled Frank Munsey's flagship before it pivoted toward the blood-and-thunder adventure that defined pulp culture. Founded 1882, *The Argosy* is broadly credited as the first true pulp magazine—cheap paper, cheap price, mass audience—and the literary laboratory from which serialized genre fiction evolved into the comic book's direct ancestor. Artist unconfirmed.