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30-416: Launched as The Monthly Story Magazine , it was published under that title from May 1905 to August 1906 with a change to The Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine for issues from September 1906 to April 1907. In its early days, Blue Book also carried a supplement on theatre actors called "Stageland". The magazine was aimed at both male and female readers. For the next 45 years (May 1907 to January 1952), it

60-461: A men's adventure magazine, publishing purportedly true stories. In its 1920s heyday, Blue Book was regarded as one of the "Big Four" pulp magazines (the best-selling, highest-paying and most critically acclaimed pulps), along with Adventure , Argosy and Short Stories . The magazine was nicknamed "King of the Pulps" in the 1930s. Pulp historian Ed Hulse has stated that between the 1910s and

90-649: A child readership. In the years after the First World War, writers such as Arthur Ransome developed the adventure genre by setting the adventure in Britain rather than distant countries, while Geoffrey Trease , Rosemary Sutcliff and Esther Forbes brought a new sophistication to the historical adventure novel. Modern writers such as Mildred D. Taylor ( Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry ) and Philip Pullman (the Sally Lockhart novels) have continued

120-622: A number of authors who did not normally publish in pulp magazines, including Georges Simenon , Shelby Foote and William Lindsay Gresham . General anthologies from Blue Book : Single author/team collections from Blue Book : Men%27s adventure Men's adventure is a genre of magazine that was published in the United States from the 1940s until the early 1970s. Catering to a male audience, these magazines featured pin-up girls and lurid tales of adventure that typically were promoted as true stories narrated in first-person by

150-577: A war focus after the U.S. entered World War II in 1941. Pulp magazine Argosy opted to switch to slick paper in 1943, and mix in more 'true' stories amidst the fiction. The other major pulps Adventure , Blue Book and Short Stories eventually followed suit. Soon new magazines joined in - Fawcett's Cavalier , Stag and Swank . During their peak in the late 1950s, approximately 130 men's adventure magazines were being published simultaneously. The interior tales usually claimed to be true stories. Women in distress were commonly featured in

180-649: Is a type of fiction that usually presents danger, or gives the reader a sense of excitement. Some adventure fiction also satisfies the literary definition of romance fiction . In the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction , Critic Don D'Ammassa defines the genre as follows: ..  An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and

210-501: Is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure." Adventure has been a common theme since the earliest days of written fiction. Indeed, the standard plot of Heliodorus, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies , a hero would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with

240-504: The Brontë Sisters , Rudyard Kipling , Sir H. Rider Haggard , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , Edgar Rice Burroughs , Victor Hugo , Emilio Salgari , Karl May , Louis Henri Boussenard , Thomas Mayne Reid , Sax Rohmer , A. Merritt , Talbot Mundy , Edgar Wallace , and Robert Louis Stevenson . Adventure novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines , which dominated American popular fiction between

270-651: The Progressive Era and the 1950s. Several pulp magazines such as Adventure , Argosy , Blue Book , Top-Notch , and Short Stories specialized in this genre. Notable pulp adventure writers included Edgar Rice Burroughs , Talbot Mundy , Theodore Roscoe , Johnston McCulley , Arthur O. Friel , Harold Lamb , Carl Jacobi , George F. Worts , Georges Surdez , H. Bedford-Jones , and J. Allan Dunn . Adventure fiction often overlaps with other genres, notably war novels , crime novels , detective novels , sea stories , Robinsonades , spy stories (as in

300-640: The "Free Lances in Diplomacy" (1910) series by Clarence H. New (1862–1933) of early spy stories . Rider Haggard and Albert Payson Terhune also published work in Blue Book . Zane Grey and Clarence E. Mulford added their Western stories to the magazine's selection of fiction. In the 1920s, Blue Book ' s roster of authors included two of the world's most famous writers of popular fiction: Edgar Rice Burroughs and Agatha Christie . In addition to Tarzan , Burroughs published material about "Nyoka,

330-566: The 1950s Blue Book "achieved and sustained a level of excellence reached by few other magazines". The early publishers were Story-Press Corporation and Consolidated Magazines, followed in 1929 by McCall . After H.S. Publications took over the reins in October 1960, Hanro (Sterling) was the publisher from August 1964 until March 1966 and then the QMG Magazine Corporation, beginning April 1967. The first editor of Blue Book

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360-657: The 1960 revival, followed by B. R. Ampolsk in 1967. Cover artists during the 1930s included Dean Cornwell , Joseph Chenoweth, Henry J. Soulen, and Herbert Morton Stoops, who continued as the cover artist during the 1940s. Interior Illustrators for the magazine included Alex Raymond and Austin Briggs (better known for their comics work), John Clymer , John Richard Flanagan, Joseph Franke, L. R. Gustavson, and Henry Thiede. The first Blue Book contributors included science-fiction authors George Allan England , William Hope Hodgson and William Wallace Cook. Blue Book also published

390-530: The Deadly (2023). Paperback novels became increasingly popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and series' such as Don Pendleton 's The Executioner mined a similar vein of war story, and continued on long after the magazines themselves shifted away from such fare. The title of the Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention album Weasels Ripped My Flesh was borrowed from a man-against-beast cover story in

420-561: The Jungle Girl" in Blue Book . Nyoka first appeared in "The Land of Hidden Men," a 1929 Blue Book short story by Burroughs. The characters of Sax Rohmer , James Oliver Curwood , and Beatrice Grimshaw appeared in Blue Book . Adventure fiction was a staple of Blue Book ; in addition to Burroughs, P. C. Wren , H. Bedford-Jones , Achmed Abdullah , George F. Worts, Lemuel de Bra (who specialized in " Chinatown " thrillers) and William L. Chester (with his Burroughs-influenced "Hawk of

450-527: The New Forest (1847), and Harriet Martineau's The Peasant and the Prince (1856). The Victorian era saw the development of the genre, with W. H. G. Kingston , R. M. Ballantyne , and G. A. Henty specializing in the production of adventure fiction for boys. This inspired writers who normally catered to adult audiences to essay such works, such as Robert Louis Stevenson writing Treasure Island for

480-579: The September 1956 issue of Man's Life , and the title went through another permutation when filmmaker Nathan Schiff made the horror feature Weasels Rip My Flesh (1979). There have been attempts to revive the Argosy title, once in the 1990s, again in 2004, and finally in 2013. Soldier of Fortune carried on the tradition of war stories for a male audience. A few contemporary " lad mag " periodicals such as FHM and Maxim are somewhat similar to

510-832: The Wilderness", about a white boy adopted by Native Americans ) all published in the magazine. Sea stories were also popular in Blue Book , and George Fielding Eliot , Captain A. E. Dingle and Albert Richard Wetjen were some of the publication's authors known for this subgenre. Bedford-Jones and Donald Barr Chidsey wrote historical fiction for Blue Book . Writers during the 1940s included Nelson S. Bond , Max Brand , Gelett Burgess , Eustace Cockrell, Irvin S. Cobb , Robert A. Heinlein , MacKinlay Kantor , Willy Ley , Theodore Pratt , Ivan Sanderson , Luke Short (pseudonym of Frederick D. Glidden, 1908–1975), Booth Tarkington , Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson , Philip Wylie and Dornford Yates . Blue Book managed to attract fiction from

540-413: The circulation of the magazine to 180,000 by 1929, probably due to the reappearance of Burroughs' Tarzan stories in the magazine. Balmer was succeeded by Blue Book's longest running editor, Donald Kennicott (1929 to January 1952). Later editors were Maxwell Hamilton (February 1952 through the mid-1950s) and Andre Fontaine in the mid-1950s, followed by Frederick A. Birmingham. Maxwell Hamilton returned for

570-538: The earlier adventure magazines, featuring a combination of glamour photography and occasional true adventure or survival stories. Publishers such as Hard Case Crime put out new and reprint paperback novels in the hard-boiled pulp tradition. Online book vendor Amazon.com uses the genre label "men's adventure" in a general sense to categorize adventure novels where the hero is an adult man to distinguish these books from "women's adventure" and "children's action & adventure." Adventure novel Adventure fiction

600-458: The hero within the setting. With a few notable exceptions (such as Baroness Orczy , Leigh Brackett and Marion Zimmer Bradley ) adventure fiction as a genre has been largely dominated by male writers, though female writers are now becoming common. Adventure stories written specifically for children began in the 19th century. Early examples include Johann David Wyss 's The Swiss Family Robinson (1812), Frederick Marryat's The Children of

630-404: The pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting, and other elements of creative work. D'Ammassa argues that adventure stories make the element of danger the focus; hence he argues that Charles Dickens 's novel A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens's Great Expectations

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660-403: The painted covers or interior art, often being menaced or tortured by Nazis or, in later years, Communists . Typical titles which relied on especially lurid and salacious cover illustrations include Man's Story, Men Today, World of Men , and Man's Epic . Many of the stories were actual historical accounts of battles and the biographies and exploits of highly decorated soldiers. Several of

690-434: The participants or in an 'as told to' style. Usual stories included wartime feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals. These magazines were also colloquially called "armpit slicks", "men's sweat magazines" or "the sweats", especially by people in the magazine publishing or distribution trades. Fawcett Publications was having some success with their slick magazine True whose stories developed more of

720-471: The second set of adventures leading to a final reunion. Variations kept the genre alive. From the mid-19th century onwards, when mass literacy grew, adventure became a popular subgenre of fiction. Although not exploited to its fullest, adventure has seen many changes over the years – from being constrained to stories of knights in armor to stories of high-tech espionage. Examples of that period include Sir Walter Scott , Alexandre Dumas, père , Jules Verne ,

750-443: The stories were combined and issued under various titles in paperback editions by Pyramid Books with the credit "edited by Phil Hirsch". Phil Hirsch was vice president of Pyramid Books from 1955 to 1975. In the 1970s, many of the men's adventure magazines dropped the fiction and "true action" stories, and started focusing on pictorials of nude women and non-fiction articles related to sex or current events. Artist Norman Saunders

780-406: The works of John Buchan , Eric Ambler and Ian Fleming ), science fiction , fantasy , ( Robert E. Howard and J. R. R. Tolkien both combined the secondary world story with the adventure novel) and Westerns . Not all books within these genres are adventures. Adventure fiction takes the setting and premise of these other genres, but the fast-paced plot of an adventure focuses on the actions of

810-626: Was Trumbull White (who would later edit Adventure magazine). White was succeeded in 1906 by Karl Edwin Harriman. Under Harriman, Blue Book would reach a circulation of 200,000 copies in 1909. From 1911 to 1919 Ray Long was the editor. Harriman took the editorial reins again in February 1919. By the time of Harriman's departure, sales of Blue Book had fallen to 80,000 copies. Edwin Balmer edited Blue Book from 1927 to 1929. Balmer managed to raise

840-482: Was a men's sweat writer-editor, and Mario Puzo was a contributor before he became a well-known novelist. Pierre Boulle , Ray Bradbury , Erskine Caldwell , Ian Fleming , Robert F. Dorr and Mickey Spillane also contributed short stories or novel excerpts to men's adventure magazines. Lawrence Block wrote prolifically for magazines of this type; some of his stories from this era were collected in The Naked and

870-465: Was known as The Blue Book Magazine , Blue Book Magazine , Blue Book , and Blue Book of Fiction and Adventure . The title was shortened with the February 1952 issue to simply Bluebook , continuing until May 1956. With a more exploitative angle, the magazine was revived with an October 1960 issue as Bluebook for Men , and the title again became Bluebook for the final run from 1967 to 1975. In its post-1960 final incarnation, Bluebook became

900-1040: Was the dean of illustrators for these magazines, occupying a position similar to that enjoyed by Margaret Brundage for the classic pulps. Charles Copeland and Earl Norem were two other popular artists who worked for the Magazine Management stable of magazines. Many illustrations that were uncredited were done by Bruce Minney , Norm Eastman, Gil Cohen , Mel Crair, Basil Gogos , and Vic Prezio among others. James Bama contributed over 400 cover and interior illustrations for an approximate eight-year period circa 1957–1964 before turning to paperback cover illustration as his mainstay. Historical artist Mort Künstler painted many covers and illustrations for these magazines, and Playboy photographer Mario Casilli started out shooting pinups for this market. At publisher Martin Goodman 's Magazine Management Company, future best-selling humorist and author Bruce Jay Friedman

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