{"id":50663,"date":"2021-11-07T03:20:02","date_gmt":"2021-11-07T03:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jurn.org\/tentaclii\/?p=50663"},"modified":"2022-04-11T07:02:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T07:02:00","slug":"the-munsey-magazines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2021\/11\/07\/the-munsey-magazines\/","title":{"rendered":"Munsey’s Magazine, 1891-1929"},"content":{"rendered":"

Currently being uploaded to Archive.org from microfilm, Munsey’s Magazine<\/em> 1891-1929<\/a>. Not fully loaded yet, it seems, but what there is has been made usefully keyword searchable at the text level.<\/p>\n

On its connection with and influence on Lovecraft, Joshi’s I Am Providence<\/em> has…<\/p>\n

One specific type of fiction we know he read in great quantities was the early pulp magazines. … As avid a dime novel reader as Lovecraft appears to have been, it is in no way surprising that he would ultimately find the Munsey magazines a compelling if guilty pleasure. What he did not know at the time was that they would radically transform his life and his career \u2014 largely, but not uniformly, for the better. There is no evidence of how long Lovecraft had read Munsey\u2019s<\/em> prior to the October 1903 issue (which, as with most popular magazines, was on the stands well before the cover date), nor how long he continued to read it. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Joshi explores this further in his essay “Lovecraft and the Munsey Magazines” (in Primal Sources<\/em> and also the latest collection of Joshi’s essays on Lovecraft).<\/p>\n

The first editor of Weird Tales<\/em> had published many tales in Munsey’s<\/em>. The magazine published Sax Rohmer in 1923, and was evidently publishing strange stories well into the 1920s.<\/p>\n

Lovecraft’s local friend and collaborator C. M. Eddy found it a market… <\/p>\n

He began his career writing short stories for a broad range of pulp fiction magazines such as … Munsey\u2019s Magazine<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, in 1923 Lovecraft had tried to break into Munsey’s<\/em>. Most likely the target was their Argosy All-Story<\/em>, but presumably the Manager Editor could have placed it in Munsey’s<\/em> itself if he had a mind. Lovecraft had not yet established himself with Weird Tales<\/em> and the tale was sent to Munsey’s<\/em> at Eddy’s insistence…<\/p>\n

It will interest you to observe the professional rejection of this piece [“The Rats in the Walls”] by R. H. Davis, Esq. of the Munsey Co., to whom I sent it at the insistence of my adopted son Eddy.” (8th November 1923, to Long)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One wonders what the thinking was here. The All-Story<\/em> had sentimental value for Lovecraft, and also a wider circulation that would have some impact locally. But at the same time, to ‘land’ there would have then put him in a better bargaining position with Weird Tales<\/em>, once (as Eddy probably anticipated) he quickly became a regular with WT<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Currently being uploaded to Archive.org from microfilm, Munsey’s Magazine 1891-1929. Not fully loaded yet, it seems, but what there is …<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53346,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50663\/revisions\/53346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}