Canine Covers in honor of National Dog Day

Pick your favorite. Mine's the German Shepherd in the Argosy.

Adventure, July 18, 1919 cover by James Reynolds	Argosy, February 7, 1925 cover by Charles Livingston Bull
Blue Book, February 1934 cover by Joseph C. Chenoweth	The Popular Magazine, March 20, 1916 cover by John A. Coughlin
Short Stories January 10th, 1941 cover by A.R. Tilburne	Western Story Magazine, August 31, 1931 cover by Sidney Riesenberg

Possibly the silliest pulp cover ever to feature a dog
Weird Tales October, 1925 cover by Andrew Brosnatch

Happy Independence Day to my US readers

The Popular Magazine, July 1906 cover commemorating the 130th Anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence

Street and Smith always did a good job with seasonal and event themes on magazine covers, putting out New Year, Thanksgiving and Christmas themed covers for a long time from the 1900s to 1920s. This is one of them, a photographic cover.

Strangely enough, in 1926, the year of the 150th anniversary, no special covers on the Popular. I wonder why.

Beautiful covers #3 - N.C Wyeth in the Popular Magazine

One of N.C. Wyeth's cover paintings for The Popular Magazine is up for sale. Root around the sofa cushions, you'll need your spare change for this one - estimated sale price is from $100,000 - $150,000. You won't be getting Wyeth's signature on this one, though, it's signed Pearson Barnes; the explanation from the catalog is interesting:

Christine Podmaniczky explains the inscription on A Hindu Mystic (Seated Arab): "The name Pierson (note variant spelling) Barnes occurs in both the 1900 and the 1920 census of Birmingham Township, and Barnes' presence in Chadds Ford around 1911 is documented in several letters written by historian Chris Sanderson to his mother (Thomas R. Thompson, Chris, Philadelphia, 1973, pp. 180, 182). Barnes worked as a day laborer and boarded with Lydia Archie, an African-American preacher who established a church in a section of Chadds Ford known as 'Little Africa.' According to Andrew Wyeth, his father 'borrowed' the name Barnes as a joke when he encountered a rule at The Popular Magazine that an artist was not permitted two consecutive covers" (N.C. Wyeth: A Catalogue Raisonné, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 2008, vol. I, p. 264).

N.C. Wyeth cover painting titled "A Hindu Mystic (Seated Arab) (sic)" from Sotheby's catalog

N.C. Wyeth cover for The Popular Magazine issue dated January 1, 1913, courtesy the FictionMags Index

The previous cover which the catalog refers to is this one, the December 15, 1912 issue:

N.C. Wyeth cover for The Popular Magazine issue dated December 15, 1912, courtesy the FictionMags Index

And to round these off, his final pulp cover painting for, you guessed it, The Popular Magazine, March 20, 1926.

N.C. Wyeth cover for The Popular Magazine issue dated March 20, 1926, courtesy the FictionMags Index

George Bronson-Howard - Author, Playwright, Movie Director, Scriptwriter

I came across George Bronson-Howard in some early issues of The Popular Magazine. I read a couple of stories about the diplomatic agent, Norroy. They’re well-written stories. The pace is best described as genteel, and the evil-doers much more gentlemanly than you’d expect, but they’re redeemed by the characterization and settings. A partial description of Norroy in his first adventure should give you the flavor of the writing: His clothes were just a little too much the mode of the day, and one indefinably regretted that a man of his intelligence should spend the thought necessary for such ultra-fashionable attire.

Looking for more information about him, I didn’t find anything online except the dates of his birth in 1884 and death in 1922. A little digging unearthed a few interesting facts, I got sucked in and before I knew it I had accumulated a few pages of material on him. To do his life justice would need a book, this article is a start.

George (Fitzalan) Bronson-Howard (c. 1916)

Holman F. Day - Newspaperman, Novelist, Poet

Holman Day was an author who appeared in “Blue Book”, “Short Stories” and “The Popular Magazine”. I found a biographical article about him in the Lewiston Journal Sunday Magazine, January 18, 1969. It started with a reference to his home. I found a picture of it on Google maps, looks amazing. The interiors look even more amazing - take a tour of the house here.

Holman Francis Day, Author (1875-1935)

John Russell - Newspaperman, Short Story Writer and Scenarist

John Russell, whose short story, The Lost God, was featured on this blog earlier started his career as a newspaperman, moved on to writing short stories for magazines and ended as a screenplay writer for Fox Studios. He worked on the screenplay of Frankenstein (1931), a few movies based on his own stories and Beau Geste (1926) among others.

This article about John Russell originally appeared in "The Morning Telegraph", New York, on August 5, 1923. It's the only biographical article about him that i've found.

Author John Russell (1885-1956) c. 1918

Charles Agnew McLean - Editor of the Popular Magazine

From the April 10, 1920 issue of the magazine Advertising and Selling, comes this article about Charles Agnew Maclean, the editor of the Popular Magazine.

The Men and Women Who Make Our Mediums: CHARLES AGNEW MACLEAN

 

One of a Series of Informal Visits with the Leading American Editors and Publishers with the Object of Interpreting What They Mean to Advertisers

 By BENJAMIN OGDEN WILKINS

 

 

Charles Agnew Maclean, Editor of The Popular Magazine

AFTER a trip of several hundred miles on horseback, a party of travellers, in the year 1911, was crossing the Painted Desert of Arizona, on their way from Flagstaff to Navajo Mountain. Arriving at the canyons, toward the tops of which are great caves left by prehistoric natives, the curiosity of the explorers was aroused to the point of insisting that they be shown the way to the Old dwellings. The Indian guides made their stand perfectly clear—they would not approach these places and could not be bribed to do so. The travellers were assured that any so venturesome as to "inquire within' would be struck dead by some dread force, or, if the caves were by some chance possibly reached and entered, at least the trespassers would be blinded instantly by the evil spirit. This superstition was sufficient to keep the Navajo Indians from investigating the "dead houses," as they are called. But it held no terrors for Zane Grey, the author, and his- party, which included Charles Agnew MacLean, editor of The Popular Magazine and editor-in-chief of the large group of publications issued by the firm of Street and Smith. Years before, the latter had become thoroughly familiar with all that is grewsome about death, for he had made the New York City morgue, at Bellevue Hospital, as well as the police stations, his special study, and had haunted these place from S p. m. till r .30 a. m. while on his first newspaper job—with the New York Sun.

 

MORGUES NOT TO HIS LIKING

 

Rut the adventures at the morgue had become too irksome to the boy, then only sixteen, and, fortified with an education secured in the public schools of Brooklyn, he left that work to do a variety of reporting for the New York Times, with which newspaper he stayed a year and a half. That made a total of three years on the newspaper side of journalism. Mr. MacLean refuses to admit that, with enough training. he might have grown to be a star reporter, but believes the intimate daily contact with all that is sordid in the city, from the pathetic suicides to the identification of poor, maimed persons, was too strenuous for any young nervous system, and this drove him away from newspaper work. For a year, after breaking all connections with editorial offices and setting all forms of writing aside, he joined a group of mining engineers and weighed ore, when not occupied in bossing a batch of thirty laborers.

 

Then came the longing for a legal career and he studied law with devotion. The time was not wasted, for it helped him to write "dime novels" in his spare hours and he was at least as fond of the latter diversion as he was devoted to reading law. There were many plots for stories to be found in connection with the courts,

 

However, about 1905. when The Popular Magazine made its debut, Mr. MacLean became its editor. In the fifteen years he has been connected with that publication, he has helped many writers of fiction to do their best. The names of authors with wide reputations who found their first stimulus from the editorial office of The Popular Magazine, would make a list of considerable length. Mr. MacLean is proud of having bought and published the first novel by Zane Grey. "The Heritage of the Desert."

 

 

On the subject of men who are doing the best fiction today, this editor puts Peter B. Kyne, Clarence L. Cullen, Albert Payson Terhune and Booth Tarkington in the first rank and gives the palm to the latter as the best all around, thoroughly American writer with the finest, most artistic workmanship, He also maintains that the historical novels of Winston Churchill have a permanent value. Too many American writers, Mr. MacLean believes, copy the English ways of writing, and English ideas—which do not fit with the ideal American treatment. It seems to be all right to learn and use technique according to the ways of the English writers, but they should not be imitated. In other words, our truly national work can not be a copy but, rather, must be a real picture, preferably direct from the soil of America.

 

In this particular, Mr. MacLean believes that Frank Norris applied the right idea, but, perhaps, lacked sufficient opportunity to Work it out before his untimely death. Rupert Hughes is considered by Mr. MacLean to have written some of the best short stories that have been done during the last ten or fifteen years.

 

WHOLESALE "ROMANCE BUYER"

In spite of the high cost of print paper and the rise in price of the magazines we are accustomed to bur, probably few of us will live long enough to spend two million dollars for fiction, but this editor has done that very thing and terms himself a wholesale purchaser of raw romance fresh from the typewriter. The total value of the material submitted and turned down in his office, if estimated by the authors of the work, would probably exceed the fabulous German war debt.

As a reader of published work, Mr. MacLean has satisfied himself on the contents Of every book and Story that has ever come within his reach. Robinson Crusoe was, on demand, repeated to him in words of one syllable so often that he is still able to quote verbatim several hundred words from the opening of the Story. At about the same time his nurse wore out a couple of editions of "Alice in Wonderland," because of the boy's fondness for listening to that masterpiece. Later, Shakespeare began to appeal and soon Midsummer Night's Dream" caught up and ran neck and neck with "Peck's Bad Boy" for first choice.

One of his fondest memories is of "Sister Carrie," a novel, by Theodore Dreiser, which several times had been stalled in publication. Drieser, who was MacLean's associate, was then unknown as an author, and he lost spirit and health because of the book's failure to get proper publicity. The plates of the book finally were sold for junk by one publishing firm, and the writer of the story thought they never could be saved from destruction, When Mr. MacLean cheered him up by investing several hundred dollars in an effort to keep them from the melting furnace until someone could be found who would finance the work. For years the type remained in the backing boxes and was used only as a convenient footrest. Finally, however, the book was produced and the author is now known wherever English is read.

Mr. MacLean feels confident that the present tendency to pay high prices for the work of popular authors, and to make the writing of fiction really worthwhile for those who are giving their time to trade, craft or profession, will not in the least lend to it an ugly, commercial angle and ruin authors. Rather, he believes that when modern business methods were brought into the relations between writers and publishers, the death sentence of the old-time author-propagandist was pronounced. The spirit of paying an honest price for good fiction will stimulate production of a much higher grade than can be produced by the starving author in the proverbial garret. 

 

Mr. MacLean is an enthusiastic golf player, a venturesome hunter and lover of the Adirondacks; a keen judge of good pipe tobacco and an ardent follower of the prize ring. A fair assortment of hobbies, isn't it? And enough to prove a cleverly balanced mind out of the office when the day's work is done. But add to these a great fondness for music of all kinds, and particularly a love for the opera and musical "shows," and the list is nearer complete. Gilbert and Sullivan, of course, come first on the list of composers of light opera, but George Cohan is close to the top, and his ' 'The Royal Vagabond" is a favorite with this heavy thinker. "Three Little Maids," an operetta which was produced a few years ago, is prominent among the pleasant memories of this critic, while "The Marriage of Figaro," an opera not frequently produced in this country, is chosen for preeminent preference.

 

When Charles Agnew MacLean first presented himself to his Scotch-Irish parents in Larne. County Antrim, Ireland. his mother declared at once that he was to be a preacher and. at the same time. his father made it clear that in his opinion the obviously proper career to predict for the Infant was that of a physician. Nevertheless. among the many occupations so far taken up, he has shown no desire to follow either of these professions. But there is yet ample time to fulfil both the prophecies, for Mr. MacLean is still a young man, just thirty-nine.

 

Review of the Pirates of the Pines by A.M. Chisholm

Treasure Island was a very successful book in 1883, gaining critical acclaim and popularity for its author, R.L. Stevenson, who until then had not been successful. It is still in print today, and has never been out of print since its first appearance in print.

Stevenson tells a rousing story of a boy becoming a man in a hunt for treasure while battling against pirates, and his characters are memorable –impulsive Jim Hawkins, the morally ambiguous pirate Long John Silver, the evil blind pirate Pew, the dogged Dr. Livesey, the bumptious yet likable Squire Trelawney and many others. Stevenson’s gift for capturing scenes in dramatic detail, a product of his childhood playing with a theatre set of toys, served him well in this book. Like that other great Victorian children’s novel, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island was born when Stevenson told his stepson a story to pass an idle rainy day.

The success of Treasure Island inspired many sequels and prequels, with Arthur Howden Smith penning one of the best prequels – Porto Bello Gold. Pirates of the Pines, originally published in 1915 as the Fur Pirates in the Popular Magazine, is A.M. Chisholm’s homage to Treasure Island. A.M. Chisholm was a writer of western and north-western stories and was one of the main contributors to the Popular Magazine, with an average of five stories every year in the nineteen twenties and thirties.

Introduction to Pirates of the Pines, from the editor of the Popular Magazine

Chisholm takes the central plot of Treasure Island and relocates it in the far north of Canada, where rivers take the place of roads, and forests are like seas where you can go for days without seeing anyone on the horizon. While Chisholm borrows the plot from Stevenson, the characters in the story are all his own – they speak in their own north woods dialect and have distinct personalities. I was unable to locate the area he uses as the setting; I did find a river named Carcajou and a lake named Atikameg, but they are so far apart as to make the story impractical. I particularly liked the beginning:

IF it were not for Peggy I should not write this story at all. Peggy is my niece, and I am very fond of her and she knows it. So when she got the idea in her glossy young head we both knew very well what would happen, although I objected that there was no woman in the story except that other Peggy who, being my sister, did not count, and the klootchman Lucille, who was most certainly not a heroine. But Peggy overrode me grandly by saying she was tired of wilderness heroines who crop up where no white man would think of taking a woman. There was something in that.

But I protested further that though I had told the yarn often enough it was quite a different matter to write it. “Bosh!“ said Peggy. “Write it just the way you tell it.”

So I was up against the iron there, too. I do not know just how to make a proper literary start; but, as with most other work, perhaps the main thing is to get started somehow.

My name is Robert Cory. I do not remember my mother. My father, who taught history in a college which is not necessary to name, died when I was a little shaver, and when his friends came to dig into his affairs they found that he had very little money and insurance and only one relative on so far as they could ascertain, a brother who lived in the wilderness that fringed the Carcajou. And so my sister Peggy and I, two forlorn little waifs, were packed off to him, and no doubt everybody was glad to be rid of us.

Now our Uncle Fred, though college bred like my father, had been a rolling stone. But finally he had taken up land on the Carcajou, in the belief that it would someday be valuable, and, of course, as everybody knows now, he was right. But at that time he was land poor. He had several thousand acres of farm and timber lands on which he was hard pressed to make even the small payments required by the government, but often he had not enough money to buy flour.

He worked a scant thirty acres with the help of one man, a slow-moving, lanky, one-eyed Scandinavian named Gus Swanson. This gave him subsistence. And for more he waited till the march of settlement west and north should strike him; and the slow years never shook his faith, which has since been amply justified.

Peggy was his favorite, and from the first she could twist him around her finger, just as the other Peggy now twists me, and to me he was more like an elder brother than an uncle.

And so, you see, as a boy my life was bounded by the Carcajou. I had only faint recollections of anything different. Its waters and bordering forests made up my world, with which I was very well content. In summer, when old enough, I helped in the gar den and fields, and fished and gathered wild berries in season for Peggy to do down against the winter. And in winter I fished through the ice, and set my small line of snares and traps for rabbit and muskrat and mink and fox; and even for the great, silver-gray, soft footed, tuft-eared lynx.

And yet it must not be supposed that Peggy and I grew up like young savages. We had our schoolbooks and our regular hours for study, and our uncle taught us, having been no doubt at much pains to brush up his rudiments.

The plotting had to be changed to fit the new locale (you can’t imagine the narrator stealing a ship in a forest), and Chisholm does a masterly job of changing the elements while retaining the flavor of the original. Murania Press’ reprint of this excellent story is well done, with high quality, easy to read typography and no errors that I could find. The cover is an excellent illustration from Frank Schoonover and suits the book perfectly. If you like adventure stories, this book is for you. To read the first four chapters of the book, click here.

A.M. Chisholm - Author, Lawyer, Judge, Coroner

A.M. Chisholm was one of the mainstays of the Popular Magazine. As far as I know, he did not create any series characters, but my knowledge in this area is limited as I don’t collect or read Popular Magazine. I recently read his book, Fur Pirates, which was recently reprinted as Pirates of the Pines by Murania Press. It is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. While the reprint is excellent, the introduction lacks biographical information except for a few tidbits; and that prompted me to go on this expedition in the wilds of the internet.

A.M. Chisholm, Canadian author