Cheap Pulp



With dime novel sales declining due to the rise of motion pictures in the late 1890s, a number of enterprising publishers developed a new genre--pulp fiction, which was aimed specifically at adult readers. Frank Munsey, a dime novel publisher, consolidated his juvenile publications and transformed them into a story paper for grown-ups, The Argosy All Story Weekly. The team of Street and Smith responded in kind with Popular Magazine,a review featuring the early work of H. G. Wells and H. Rider Haggard. By 1920, pulp fiction was readily available at newsstands around the country and achieved a readership much larger than that of dime novels in their heyday.