Argosy was an American magazine, founded in 1882 as The Golden Argosy, a children's weekly, edited by Frank Munsey and published by E. G. Rideout. Munsey took over as publisher when Rideout went bankrupt in 1883, and after many struggles made the magazine profitable. He shortened the title to The Argosy in 1888 and targeted an audience of men and boys with adventure stories. In 1894 he switched it to a monthly schedule and in 1896 he eliminated all non-fiction and started using cheap pulp paper, making it the first pulp magazine. Circulation had reached half a million by 1907, and remained strong until the 1930s. The name was changed to Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1920 after the magazine merged with All-Story Weekly, another Munsey pulp, and from 1929 it became just Argosy.

In 1925 Munsey died, and the publisher, the Frank A. Munsey Company, was purchased by William Dewart, who had worked for Munsey. By 1942 circulation had fallen to no more than 50,000, and after a failed effort to revive the magazine by including sensational non-fiction, it was sold that year to Popular Publications, another pulp magazine publisher. Popular converted it from pulp to slick format, and initially attempted to make it a fiction-only magazine, but gave up on this within a year. Instead it became a men's magazine, carrying fiction and feature articles aimed at men. Circulation soared and by the early 1950s was well over one million.

Early contributors included Horatio Alger, Oliver Optic, and G. A. Henty. During the pulp era, many famous writers appeared in Argosy, including O. Henry, James Branch Cabell, Albert Payson Terhune, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Erle Stanley Gardner, Zane Grey, Robert E. Howard, and Max Brand. Argosy was regarded as one of the most prestigious publications in the pulp market, along with Blue Book, Adventure and Short Stories. After the transition to slick format it continued to publish fiction, including science fiction by Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, and Ray Bradbury. From 1948 to 1958 it published a series by Gardner called "The Court of Last Resort" which examined the cases of dozens of convicts who maintained their innocence, and succeeding in overturning many of the convictions. NBC adapted the series for television in 1957.

Popular sold Argosy to David Geller in 1972, and in 1978 Geller sold it to the Filipacchi Group, which closed it at the end of the year. The magazine has been revived several times, most recently in 2016.

Publication history

The Golden Argosy

In the late 1870s, Frank Munsey was working in Augusta, Maine, as the manager of the local Western Union office. He helped a friend get a job at a publisher in Augusta, and after a couple of years his friend moved to New York City to work for another publishing company. Munsey was becoming more familiar with the publishing industry during this time, and decided he wanted to launch a magazine of his own. He had some difficulty in getting anyone to agree to invest, but eventually persuaded a stockbroker he knew to put in $2,500 ($ in ), of which $500 was a loan to Munsey. Munsey invested $500 of his own, and his friend in New York City added another $1,000, making a total of $4,000 ($ in ) in capital. Munsey resigned from Western Union, and moved to New York on September 23, 1882, bringing with him manuscripts he had bought for the magazine before leaving Augusta.

alt=Upper body of a man in formal wear|left|thumb|Frank Munsey

Once in New York, Munsey quickly realized that the cost estimates he had made, based on what he had been able to learn while in Maine, were unrealistically low. and to include lithographed covers and internal illustrations. it was eight pages long and cost five cents ($ in ). Subscribers were offered a set of colored chromolithographs along with their subscription. The first issue with Munsey as publisher was dated September 8, 1883. Munsey again was reduced to a few dollars, but he was able to borrow $300 ($ in ) from Oscar Holway, a banker in Augusta who was a friend. At about this time he bought some stories from Malcolm Douglas, but when Douglas came to collect his payment Munsey offered him the job of editor, at $10 ($ in ) per week, in lieu of payment for the stories. Douglas accepted. Douglas's first issue was dated September 8, 1883, and White took over with the December 4, 1886 issue. Douglas twice saw Munsey write a letter to Elverson, offering the subscription list of The Golden Argosy in return for a job at $50 per week, but Munsey did not mail either letter. Before the campaign he had been unable to get credit; after it he was $8,000 ($ in ) in debt to his suppliers. Ten years later Munsey recalled the change, and said "That debt made me. Before, I had no credit and had to live from hand to mouth. But when I owed $8,000 my creditors didn't dare drop me. They saw their only chance of getting anything was to keep me going." Munsey had a bank account in New York, but kept two more, in Maine and Chicago, moving funds between them constantly: "I kept thousands of dollars in the air between these three banks. It was a dizzy, dazzling, daring game, a game to live for, to die for, a royal glorious game".

The fact that The Golden Argosy never missed an issue also helped Munsey persuade the businesses he worked with to extend him credit, which in turn helped him invest in the business. In the winter of 1885/1886 he wrote a serial, Afloat in a Great City, with the intention of using it as the basis for an advertising campaign to increase subscriptions. Munsey owed $5,000 at this point, and went into debt by about another $10,000 to advertise the story, distributing 100,000 sample copies of the March 13, 1886 issue containing the first installment of the serial in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the surrounding areas. The campaign was a success, and from being a more-or-less breakeven concern, The Golden Argosy began to net Munsey about $100 a week in profit, not counting the cost of the campaign. This convinced Munsey to invest further in building circulation. At the same time Munsey doubled the page count and increased the price from five cents to six. In 1887 he began a national advertising campaign, with traveling representatives as far west as Nebraska, and a mail campaign for points further west. He wrote another story, The Boy Broker, for serialization, beginning in the February 5, 1887 issue, and credited it with adding 20,000 to The Golden Argosy<nowiki/>'s circulation. Over five months the campaign gave away 11,500,000 sample issues: his debt ballooned to $95,000 ($ in ), but he was now clearing $1,500 ($ in ) a week in profit, and circulation reached 115,000 in May 1887.