Books on Pulp Magazines

This is a very interesting book, even though the exact title is a little deceptive. Although the book has eight chapters, the first four deal with publications that came well before actual pulp magazines. This part deals with things published as early as the very early 1800's, then proceeds through the various types of publications, arriving at chapter five with the actual pulp magazines.

This is not a bad thing, though, as it is always good to know where something has come from, it's history, and this provides a type of history of things leading up to pulp magazines that I have not seen anywhere else at all.

The book is filled with black-and-white illustrations from the stories, and has some black-and-white cover reproductions along with a few color covers of pulp magazines.

Weird Vampire Tales, 1992.

Unlike some of the other books, this one clearly identifies itself as dealing with a certain type of story, in this case, vampires. The book is over 400 pages long, containing some 30 stories. Some of the authors are extremely well known, also, such as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard (Conan), Lester del Rey, A.E. van Vogt, Robert Bloch, and August Dereleth.

American Pulp, 1997.

This is a book that is 550 pages long, and filled with stories about crime fiction. There are 35 stories, including one by Mickey Spillane , along with a lot of the other name writers of the time.

Pulp Culture, 1998

There are different covers for this book, depending on the date it was printed. The book is an excellent examination of pulps, starting from their very beginnings and going right on till the time they stopped. Virtually every kind of pulp can be found in the book, which is illustrated with numerous beautiful cover reproductions.

The information in the book is also well done, making this book an absolute must for anyone who is into collecting pulps.

The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines, 2000.

Although it uses the term “magazines,” it's really talking just about the pulp magazines. The book has eight chapters and an appendix, and loads of shots of color covers. The book covers science fiction, detective/crime pulps, mystery, and sexual topics and covers. Westerns are left almost entirely out, and sports is also left out.

Still, it's a very valuable resource for those wanting to learn about the era of pulp magazines.

Pulp Masters, 2001.

This is a book that is over 400 pages long, containing stories from pulps that dealt with crime. There are six stories, including one by Mickey Spillane, one of the better known writers of crime fiction. Each story has a one-page or so piece on the particular author of that story.

Pulp Action, 2001.

This book is over 600 pages long of crime-related stories. The only problem with this and a couple of other similar books is that you need to read the back cover carefully to realize that the whole books are crime stories, and not a mix of various kinds of stories.

Girly Magazines , 2006

This is a book that's over 670 pages in length, and is written in three languages, one column for each language on each written page. It's also incredibly crammed with cover and interior photographs.

Chapter 4 refers to the Spicy Pulps with lots of images of covers from pulps like Snappy through Spicy Detective.

The rest of the book covers girly magazines from various countries and various periods in time.

Definitely an interesting book.

The Incredible Pulps, 2006.

This is another of the books that reproduces covers from the pulp magazines of the thirties through fifties. It's divided into four sections: science fiction, horror, mystery and adventure/western.

There's a brief introduction, and the name of the artist, if known, for the illustrations.

The book is about 5 ¼ inches by 6 ½ inches in size, so it's fairly small. Also, some of the entries in the horror section are ones that don't really belong there. They have a half-dozen Shadow covers, and various ones from other detective magazines, all of which, at least in my opinion, should be under the mystery section.

It's an ok book, but I would have preferred larger illustrations/larger pages and more accuracy in categories that were used.

The Great Pulp Heroes, 2007

This is a really fascinating book about various pulp heroes. It starts out with some background on the pulps, then has separate chapters on the Shadow, Doc Savage, G-8, The Spider, Operator #5, Tarzan and various others, including Captain Future, airplane pulp characters, and even a couple of rather strange villains like The Octopus.

There's also a section of black-and-white cover reproductions of some of the pulps.

If you are at all interested in pulps, this will be an excellent addition to your collection of reference materials.

Men's Adventure Magazines in Postwar America, 2008.

The chapter titles include Blood,Sweat and tits; Weasels Ripped My Flesh, the Wild rampage of the Sex-crazed Pirate Women, I Watched the Fire Dance of Human Sacrifice, We Shot Our Way Out, and Soft Flesh for the Reds' House of 1,000 Agonies. There are loads and loads of color reproductions of various magazine covers. The majority of the book is taken up by these covers, which is good.

The print size used in the book, though, is very small and, unless your eyesight is perfect, you're going to need a magnifying glass. Also, chapter text is done in English, French and German, although the cover illustrations used in the sections do differ.

The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

The book is around 580 pages in length, and, like most of the other books with similar titles, a compilation of various crime-related stories from the pulps. This one has 32 stories, plus an over-all introduction.

Bad Girls of Pulp Fiction.

This is an incredibly-small size book, physically. It consists of cover reproductions of various pulp-fiction paperbacks and a brief description of each.

---

Main Index

Main Pulp Index