The All-Story Magazine

The October 1912 issue of All-Story, containing the first Tarzan story. The artist is Clinton Pettee.[1]
Editor	Robert H. Davis
Categories	Pulp magazine
Publisher	Frank Munsey
First issue	January 1905
Final issue	July 17, 1920
Country	USA

The All-Story Magazine was a pulp magazine, founded in 1905 and published by Frank Munsey. It was published monthly until March 1914, and then switched to a weekly schedule. Munsey merged it with The Cavalier, another of his pulp magazines, in 1914, and the title changed to All-Story Cavalier Weekly for a year. In 1920 it was merged with Munsey's Argosy; the combined magazine was retitled Argosy All-Story Weekly. The editor was Robert H. Davis; Thomas Newell Metcalf also worked as a managing editor^{[note 1]} for the magazine.

Many well-known writers appeared in All-Story, including the mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart and the Western writer Max Brand. The most famous contributor to the magazine was Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose first sale was Under the Moons of Mars, which appeared in All-Story in 1911. This was the start of his Barsoom science fiction series, set on Mars; the next three novels in the series also appeared in All-Story. In 1912 All-Story printed Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes, and more stories of Tarzan followed, along with two instalments of another of Burroughs' series, about Pellucidar, a land inside the Earth. Many other science fiction and fantasy stories appeared over the life of the magazine. Starting in 1939 some of the stories from All-Story were included in Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fantastic Novels, two magazines created to reprint old stories from the Munsey magazines.

In 1882, Frank Munsey launched The Golden Argosy, a children's weekly magazine. The title changed to just The Argosy in 1888, and in 1896 Munsey switched to using coarse pulp paper, and printing only fiction, thus launching the first pulp magazine. It was immediately successful. Other publishers brought out competing magazines, such as Street & Smith's The Popular Magazine in 1903, and Story-Press's The Monthly Story Magazine in 1905. As the competition grew, Munsey decided to add another pulp title.^[3]

Munsey launched The All-Story Magazine in January 1905 on a monthly schedule with Robert H. Davis as the editor, and Davis hired Thomas Newell Metcalf to work for him as managing editor.^{[4][5][note 2]} Munsey had hired Davis early in 1904 to work on the New York Sunday News, but that ceased publication in April, and Davis had been fiction editor of Munsey's Magazine since then.^[4][7]

In March 1914 All-Story's schedule switched to weekly, and in May of that year it was combined with another Munsey pulp, The Cavalier, under the title All-Story Cavalier Weekly.^[5] Davis and Metcalf had each dealt with some All-Story contributors up to that point, but thereafter Davis took over working with the writers who had been Metcalf's responsibility.^[8][9] The following year the "Cavalier" was dropped, and it continued as All-Story Weekly again until 1920, when it was merged into The Argosy.^[5] The combined magazine was retitled Argosy All-Story Weekly, and retained that name until 1929.^[3]

The first issue included the first instalment of five novels, including W. Bert Foster's When Time Slipped a Cog, about a man who discovers a year of his life has passed that he cannot remember. Two of the short stories were science fiction as well: Howard R. Garis's "The Ghost at Box 13", and Margaret Prescott Montague's "The Great Sleep Tanks".^[4] The May issue reprinted Garrett P. Serviss's short novel The Moon Metal (originally published in book form in 1900), about a new fiscal standard that replaced gold with a metal from the moon.^[10][11] Serviss also appeared in 1909 with A Columbus of Space, serialized in the January to June issues, which science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz commented "caused some to class Serviss as the equal of Jules Verne".^[12]

Mary Roberts Rineharts' first story, "A Gasoline Road Agent", appeared in the April 1905 issue. Davis encouraged her efforts, and her first novel, The Circular Staircase, was serialized in All-Story from November 1906 to March 1907. In book form the novel later became the first major success of her career.^[11][13] Max Brand, one of the most prolific of all pulp writers, sold his first Western novel, The Untamed, to All-Story; it was serialized starting in the December 1918 issue.^[14] Ray Cummings, another prolific pulp author, began his career with "The Girl in the Golden Atom" in the March 15, 1919 issue of All-Story; it was one of the most popular stories he ever wrote.^[3] Other All-Story writers included Rex Stout, later a well-known mystery writer; Western writer Raymond S. Spears;^[15] science fiction writer Murray Leinster;^[3] horror and fantasy writers Tod Robbins and Perley Poore Sheehan,^[15] and Jamaican writer W. Adolphe Roberts.^[16] All-Story also published poetry, including work by Djuna Barnes.^[17] Eldred Kurtz Means's "Tickfall" stories, about black Americans in Louisiana, began in Cavalier and moved to All-Story when the two magazines merged.^[18] Johnston McCulley's Zorro series began with the serialization of The Curse of Capistrano in August and September 1919, and continued in Argosy after the magazines merged in 1920.^[19] Edwin Baird, later the founding editor of Weird Tales, made his first sale to All-Story in 1906, and contributed several more over the life of the magazine.^[20][21]

The most important author discovered by All-Story was Edgar Rice Burroughs.^[10] Burroughs was thirty-five years old in the summer of 1911, and unsuccessful in business. He began writing a novel in July of that year, "very surreptitiously" as he later recalled: "I was very much ashamed of my new vocation ... It seemed a foolish thing for a full grown man to be doing—much on a par with dressing myself in a boy scout suit and running away from home to fight Indians". By August he had completed enough of the story to send it to All-Story under the title "Dejah Thoris, Martian Princess", adding in his covering letter that the completed story would be three times the length of the 43,000 words he was submitting. Metcalf replied with guarded enthusiasm, asking for some cuts, and a total length of no more than 70,000 words. Metcalf bought the rewritten story in November for $400 (equivalent to $13,000 in 2023); given the manuscript had taken four months of work, Burroughs was unimpressed at the pay rate.^[23] The story was serialized in All-Story from February to July 1912, titled Under the Moons of Mars.^[24] Darkness and Dawn, by George Allan England, had been serialized in another Munsey magazine, The Cavalier, starting in January that year, and science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz regards the appearance of these two stories as signalling the start of an era of popular science-fictional love stories.^[25] Burroughs had intended the story to be printed under the pseudonym "Normal Bean", to indicate he was an ordinary person despite the fantastic nature of the story.^[26] The typesetter assumed it was an error and the story appeared as by "Norman Bean", leading Burroughs to give up the pseudonym and publish his subsequent work under his real name.^{[27][note 3]}

Metcalf suggested Burroughs follow up Under the Moons of Mars with a historical romance of knights and damsels in distress. Burroughs responded with The Outlaw of Torn at the end of November, which Metcalf rejected.^[29] In March 1912 Burroughs sent Metcalf a description of the novel he was working on, titled Tarzan of the Apes; Metcalf was enthusiastic about the idea and promptly bought the manuscript when Burroughs submitted it in June.^[30] It appeared in the October 1912 issue of All-Story.^[10] The next three Barsoom novels appeared in All-Story over the next four years: The Gods of Mars was serialized from January to May, 1913;^[31] The Warlord of Mars ran from December 1913 to March 1914, and Thuvia, Maid of Mars appeared in 1916.^[32] The second Tarzan book, The Return of Tarzan, appeared in New Story Magazine, but the series returned to All-Story for three of the later novels: The Beasts of Tarzan, The Son of Tarzan, and Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, and for some of the subsequent short stories in the series.^[33] Burroughs' Pellucidar series, about adventures inside a hollow Earth, also began in All-Story, with At the Earth's Core and Pellucidar.^[34] The initial rate of less than a cent per word that Burroughs received for his first sale began to increase: Metcalf agreed to a rate of two and a half cents per word (equivalent to $0.76 in 2023), for everything he bought from Burroughs in 1914.^[35]

By the time All-Story merged with Argosy in the summer of 1920, almost two dozen stories and serialized novels by Burroughs had appeared in the magazine.^[33] Burroughs' popularity led to a demand for similar stories, and to imitations.^[36] Science fiction historian Mike Ashley suggests that this was the reason for the increasing number of science fiction stories that began to appear, from writers such as Austin Hall, Homer Eon Flint, and Junius B. Smith. Hall's "Almost Immortal" appeared in 1916, along with short science-fictional tales by John U. Giesy, J. B. Smith, Charles B. Stilson, and Victor Rousseau.^[36][37] The following year All-Story published Abraham Merritt's first story, "Through the Dragon Glass". Merritt was one of the most popular pulp writers, and in 1918 two more of his stories appeared: The People of the Pit, and "The Moon Pool".^[38] "The Conquest of the Moon Pool", a sequel to the latter story, followed in 1919, and both were very popular.^[36] When Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine, in 1926, he soon discovered that the technically oriented science fiction he preferred did not sell as well as more fantastic stories, and he responded by reprinting "The Moon Pool" in the May 1927 issue.^[39]

The first issue's cover printed the words "Something New" in a script font on a red background. A picture of two cowboys appeared on the next issue. The third issue took over the cover for a declaration that the magazine had reached 200,000 circulation, but thereafter artwork was used on every cover. Artists included Valentine Sandberg and F. X. Chamberlain. The cover illustrations did not at first have any relationship to the stories in the magazine.^[4]

In 2006, a copy of the October 1912 issue of All-Story, featuring the first appearance of the character Tarzan in any medium, sold for $59,750 in an auction held by Heritage Auctions of Dallas.^[40]

The magazine's title was originally The All-Story Magazine. This was shortened to The All-Story in June 1911, and then changed to All-Story Weekly when it switched from monthly to weekly publication with the March 7, 1914 issue. From May 16, 1914 to May 8, 1915 it was titled All-Story Cavalier Weekly as a result of the merger with The Cavalier, and for the rest of its run, until the July 17, 1920 issue, it was All-Story Weekly again.^[5][41]

In 1929 Munsey's reorganized two of their magazines: Munsey's Magazine became part of a new love story magazine titled All-Story, and Argosy All-Story Weekly became simply Argosy.^[42][43] The new All-Story was soon retitled All-Story Love Stories and continued publication until 1955.^[42]

The long history of the Munsey magazines meant that by the 1930s there were many stories readers had heard of but could no longer obtain. In response to reader requests, Munsey's launched Famous Fantastic Mysteries in 1939 to reprint old stories from both Argosy and All-Story Weekly. The following year Munsey's launched Fantastic Novels, another reprint magazine, to make longer stories available without needing to serialize them in Famous Fantastic Mysteries. Fantastic Novels only lasted five issues before being discontinued in 1941, but Famous Fantastic Mysteries lasted for 81 issues, ceasing publication with the June 1953 issue.^[44][45] Popular brought back Fantastic Novels for another 20 issues between 1948 and 1951^[45]

In 1970 Sam Moskowitz edited a collection of stories from the Munsey magazines titled Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912–1920. Seven of the nine stories included had originally appeared in All-Story.^[3][46]

• Ashley, Michael (1976) [1974]. "Introduction: An Amazing Experiment". In Ashley, Michael (ed.). The History of the Science Fiction Magazine: Volume 1: 1926–1935. Westport, Connecticut: Henry Regnery Company. pp. 11–51. ISBN 0-8092-8003-5.
• Ashley, Mike (1985). "The Argosy and All-Story". In Tymn, Marshall B.; Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 103–109. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
• Clareson, Thomas D. (1985a). "Famous Fantastic Mysteries". In Tymn, Marshall B. & Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 211–216. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
• Clareson, Thomas D. (1985b). "Fantastic Novels". In Tymn, Marshall B. & Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 241–244. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
• Drew, Bernard A. (2015). Black Stereotypes in Popular Series Fiction, 1851–1955: Jim Crow Era Authors and Their Characters. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7864-7410-3 – via Google Books.
• Earle, David M. (2009). Re-Covering Modernism: Pulps, Paperbacks and the Prejudice of Form. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-6154-2.
• Hulse, Ed (2013). The Blood 'N' Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction. Morris Plains, New Jersey: Murania Press. ISBN 978-1491010938.
• Locke, John (2007). Pulpwood Days Volume 1: Editors You Want to Know. Elkhorn, California: Off-Trail Publications. ISBN 978-0-9786836-2-7.
• Moskowitz, Sam (1970). "A History of the Scientific Romance in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920". In Moskowitz, Sam (ed.). Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of the Scientific Romance in the Munsey Magazines, 1912–1920. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. pp. 289–433. ISBN 0-03-081858-3.
• Porges, Irwin (1975). Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press. ISBN 0-8425-0079-0.
• Server, Lee (2002). Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. New York: Checkmark Books. ISBN 0-8160-4578-X.
• Stableford, Brian (1997). "Merritt, Abraham". In Clute, John; Grant, John (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 103–109. ISBN 0-312-15897-1.
• Sumner, David E.; Rhoades, Shirrel (2006). Magazines: A Complete Guide to the Industry. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 0-8204-7617-X.