Inside look: How Street & Smith handled manuscripts in the early 1920s

AFTER the author has hopefully dropped his manuscript in the mail-box, what happens when it reaches the offices of the Street & Smith Corporation, the largest publishers of fiction periodicals in the world? We will assume that your story has been addressed to one of the nine magazines—Popular, Ainslee’s, People’s, Top Notch, Love Stories, Detective Story, Western Story, Picture Play, Sea Stories—published monthly, fortnightly or weekly as the case may be.

Street & Smith building, New York

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.