As I've said before, mid-Thirties ARGOSY is one of my favorite pulps. It might be my top favorite if not for the abundance of serials. I love the covers by Paul Stahr, though, and you can't beat the assortment of authors. In this issue, you'll find stories by W.C. Tuttle, Theodore Roscoe, F.V.W. Mason, Frank Richardson Pierce, and Eustace L. Adams, top writers, all of them, as well as the lesser-known Sinclair Gluck and Tip Bliss. Never having read anything by Gluck or Bliss, they may top-notch, too, for all I know. The serial installments are by Pierce, Adams, and Mason, so if I were to read this issue (I don't own a copy), I would probably skip those stories, which knocks out a considerable chunk of wordage, but I'm sure I would enjoy the others.
I really like the cover by Paul Stahr on this issue of ARGOSY. Stahr doesn't get mentioned a lot when people talk about great pulp cover artists, but I think his work was consistently excellent and he really gave ARGOSY a distinctive look. The lineup of authors inside this issue is very strong, too: a Whispering Sands story by Erle Stanley Gardner, short stories by F. Van Wyck Mason and Anthony M. Rud, and serial installments by Roy de S. Horn, J. Allan Dunn, Eustace L. Adams, and J.E. Grinstead. Those serials are frustrating to readers and collectors now, but the readers back in 1930 must have enjoyed them.
I haven't featured an issue of ARGOSY in a while, and this one sports a nice dramatic cover by Paul Stahr, whose covers I nearly always enjoy. As usual, there are some fine writers inside this issue: Erle Stanley Gardner, Max Brand, Fred MacIsaac, J.D. Newsom, Karl Detzer, and the lesser-known Anson Hatch and Howard Ellis Davis. The Brand, MacIsaac, and Detzer stories are all serial installments, but if I had a copy of this one (I don't) I'd be happy to read the novelettes by Gardner and Newsom.
Yes, the serials are annoying and the bane of a collector's existence, but I love ARGOSY anyway. There was just so much fine fiction and so many great authors to be found in its pages. This issue has a cover by Paul Stahr, who did most of them for the magazine during the Thirties. The lead story is a circus yarn by John Wilstach. I haven't read this one, but I've read other circus stories by Wilstach and enjoyed them all. Also on hand are Frederick Faust (twice, as Max Brand and Dennis Lawton), H. Bedford-Jones, Borden Chase, Anthony M. Rud, and Hapsburg Liebe. And that's just a typical issue of ARGOSY in the Thirties, the magazine's glory days as far as I'm concerned.
Yesterday's pulp was dated July 4, 1931, and so is today's. This is an All-Star Number of ARGOSY, according to the cover, and I can't argue with that claim. The cover is by Paul Stahr, who painted many great ones for ARGOSY, and inside are stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Theodore Roscoe, George F. Worts, Robert Carse, Ray Cummings, J.E. Grinstead, William Merriam Rouse, and Lt. John Hopper. You won't find a lineup of pulp authors much better than that one.
