The Classic Era Of American Pulp Magazines
(2000 - Prion Books)

(by Peter Haining) This book scores far better than I really think it should. It reaps the benefit of featuring a lot of art images, but too many are a pulp-cover, or interior illustration, presented way too small, sharing the page with a bit of text and a lot of negative space. Perhaps that is somewhat made up for on the somewhat cluttered multiple-image pages, where frequently one of the reproductions turns out to be quite large & impressive. How does it count out ? The book is 224 pages, with 60 of them pulling two or more images together and 99 registering as 'featuring' a single image without being crowded (despite my crabbiness, it has to be said a good number of those *are* of the full-page-ish-ness that is wanted). Know that this is one of those rare art-books where the images are presented 'matte' as opposed to glossy, which may be off-putting to some. The cover presentations are all of the covers themselves, in all their typographic glory. The displays are almost always captioned with an identification of the magazine and the artist (if known), as well as usually a brief factoid. The rest of the book is ruled by the text (but usually accompanied by some small art example), which is pulled into the following chapters: Big Shots And Cheap Thrills, All Undressed And Somewhere To Go (The Hot Pulps), The Coming Of The Hardboiled Dicks (The Crime Pulps), The Spice Of Life And Lust (The Spicy Pulps), The Naked And The Dead (The Fantasy Pulps), Fiends In Red Satin (The Shudder Pulps), Knobheads And Other B.E.M.s (The Sci-Fi Pulps), The Chilling Of Hotsy (The Brit Pulps), The Pulp Wordsmiths, and an index. The artists get some coverage, at least mentioned on more than a third of those text pages. The artists 'well-presented' here are: David Arden, James Bama**, E.H. Banger, Walter Baumhofer, Rudolph Belarski (5), Earle Bergey (4), Enoch Bolles, Arthur Rodman Bowker, Oliver Brabbins, Margaret Brundage (2)*, R.M. Bull, John A. Coughlin, Lee Brown Coye (2), Fred Craft, Harold S. DeLay (2), Rafael DeSoto*, Clarence Doore, Peter Driben, Ed Emshwiller**, Joe Farer, Virgil Finlay (4), Reginald Greenwood, Tom Greiner (2), Reginald Heade, C. Holland, John Newton Howitt, Robert Gibson Jones (2), Josh Kirby, Jack Lokoli, Tom Lovell**, Bert Low, Frederic Madan, Tom Marchioni, Philip Mendoza (3), Harry Parkhurst, Frank R. Paul (3), H.W. Perl, Keats Petree, George Quintana (2), Hubert Rogers, John Ruger, Norman Saunders (3-one as "Blaine")**, J.W. Scott, Amos Sewell (2), Philip Simmonds, Malvin Singer, Paul Stahr, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, Ray Theobald, David Waite, H.J. Ward (3)**, Wesso, Irene Zimmerman, Rudolph W. Zirm (2), and UNKNOWN (19).

* - Note that the 'well-presented' pieces here by Brundage, and DeSoto, can additionally be found so in their own collections on The List.

** - Note that the 'well-presented' pieces here by Bama, Emshwiller, Lovell, Saunders, and Ward, cannot additionally be found so in their own collections on The List.

other Peter Haining books

Terror ! / A Pictorial History Of Horror Stories / The Art Of Horror Stories