Sports in the Pulp Magazines

From the late 1800s through the first half of the 1900s, pulp magazines—costing a dime and filled with both fiction and nonfiction—were a staple of American life. Though often overlooked by popular culturalists, sports were one of the staples of the pulp scene; such standards as the National Police Gazette and All-Story carried some sports stories, and several publications, such as Sport Story Magazine, were entirely devoted to them. An overview of the pulps is followed by an examination of those devoted to sports: how they came into being, the development of the genre, the popularity of its heroes, and coverage of real-life events. The roles of editors, writers, artists, and publishers are then fully covered. A chapter on Street & Smith, the foremost publisher of sports pulps, follows, while a concluding chapter discusses the reasons for the demise of the pulps in the early 1950s.

John Dinan has written extensively on pulp magazines in such publications as Fangoria and Baseball America. He lives in Topsfield, Massachusetts.

John Dinan

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 210
Bibliographic Info: 11 photos, references, appendix, index
Copyright Date: 2009 [1998]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4047-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0767-2
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

1. Introduction      3
2. The Magazines      7
3. Sports in the Pulps      33
4. The All-Sports Pulps      63
5. Street & Smith’s Sport Story Magazine      103
6. The Pulp Writers      130
7. Editors, Artists and Readers      158
8. The Passing of the Pulps      179
9. Appendix: Sports Pulp Titles      192

Index      197

• “an extensive survey…detailed”—Library Journal
• “rich and entertaining”—AB Bookman’s Weekly
• “highly recommend[ed]…a rarely discussed topic”—Secret Sanctum
• “admirable…a valuable contribution”—Dime Novel Round-up