thumb|The cover of the November 29, 1913 edition of Collier's featuring an illustration by [[Alonzo Myron Kimball (artist)|Alonzo Myron Kimball]]
Collier's was an American general-interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as Collier's Once a Week, then renamed in 1895 as Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal, shortened in 1905 to Collier's: The National Weekly and eventually to simply Collier's. The magazine ceased publication with the issue dated the week ending January 4, 1957, although a brief, failed attempt was made to revive the Collier's name with a new magazine in 2012.
As a result of Peter Collier's pioneering investigative journalism, Collier's established a reputation as a proponent of social reform. After lawsuits by several companies against Collier's ended in failure, other magazines joined in what Theodore Roosevelt described as "muckraking journalism". Founded by Nathan S. Collier, a descendant of Peter Collier, the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability was created in 2019. The annual US$25,000 prize is one of the largest American journalism prizes, and was established to honor Peter Collier's legacy and contributions in the field of investigative reporting.
History
19th century
Peter F. Collier (1849–1909) left Ireland for the U.S. at age 17.
With the issue dated April 28, 1888, Collier's Once a Week was launched as a magazine of "fiction, fact, sensation, wit, humor, news". It was sold with the biweekly Collier's Library of novels and popular books at bargain rates and as a stand-alone priced at seven cents. When Robert Collier died in 1918, he left a will that turned the magazine over to three of his friends, Samuel Dunn, Harry Payne Whitney and Francis Patrick Garvan.
Robert J. Collier won a lawsuit against Postum Cereal Company and was awarded $50,000 in damages, but in 1912 an appeals court then handed down a majority decision that Postum deserved a new trial. The Postum Company believed that Collier's weekly used magazine coverage to attack their company's products in retaliation for not advertising in Collier's after Collier's wrote against a Grape-Nuts's claim that it was an "A Food for Brain and Nerves." Postum then bought advertising pages in major newspapers in retaliation. After 1924, printing of the magazine was done at the Crowell-Collier printing plant on West High Street in Springfield, Ohio.
Fiction
Collier's popularized the short-short story which was often planned to fit on a single page. Knox Burger was Collier's fiction editor from 1948 to 1951 when he left to edit books for Dell and Fawcett Publications; he was replaced by Eleanor Stierhem Rawson. The numerous authors who contributed fiction to Collier's included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ray Bradbury, Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd, Willa Cather, Roald Dahl, Jack Finney, Erle Stanley Gardner, Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Sinclair Lewis, E. Phillips Oppenheim, J. D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Louis L'Amour, Albert Payson Terhune and Walter Tevis. Humor writers included Parke Cummings and H. Allen Smith.
Serializing novels during the late 1920s, Collier's sometimes simultaneously ran two ten-part novels, and non-fiction was also serialized. Between 1913 and 1949, Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu serials, illustrated by Joseph Clement Coll and others, were hugely popular. The first three Fu Manchu novels by Rohmer were actually compilations of 29 short stories that Rohmer wrote for Collier's.
The Mask of Fu Manchu, which was adapted into a 1932 film and a 1951 Wally Wood comic book, was first published as a 12-part Collier's serial, running from May 7 to July 23, 1932. The May 7 issue displayed a memorable cover illustration by famed maskmaker Władysław T. Benda, and his mask design for that cover was repeated by many other illustrators in subsequent adaptations and reprints.
Illustrators
Leading illustrators contributed to the covers of Collier's. They included C. C. Beall, W.T. Benda, Chesley Bonestell, Charles R. Chickering, Howard Chandler Christy, Arthur Crouch, Harrison Fisher, James Montgomery Flagg, Alan Foster, Charles Dana Gibson, Vernon Grant, Emil Hering, Earl Oliver Hurst, Alonzo Myron Kimball, Percy Leason, Frank X. Leyendecker, J. C. Leyendecker, Paul Martin, John Alan Maxwell, Ronald McLeod, John Cullen Murphy, Maxfield Parrish, Edward Penfield, Robert O. Reed, Frederic Remington, Anthony Saris, John Sloan, Jessie Willcox Smith, Frederic Dorr Steele, Arthur Szyk, Emmett Watson, Jon Whitcomb and Lawson Wood. Other top illustrators contributed prolifically to their short stories. They included Harold Mathews Brett, Richard V. Culter, Robert Fawcett, Denver Gillen and Quentin Reynolds.
In 1903, Gibson signed a $100,000 contract, agreeing to deliver 100 pictures (at $1000 each) during the next four years. From 1904 to 1910, Parrish was under exclusive contract to Collier's, which published his famed Arabian Nights paintings in 1906-07.
Investigative journalism
thumb|A December 1905 advertisement for Collier's magazine's exposé of patent medicine fraud, which culminated in Samuel Hopkins Adams' 11-part series "[[s:The Great American Fraud|The Great American Fraud"]]
thumb|A poster promoting Collier's in 1906
When Norman Hapgood became editor of Collier's in 1903, he attracted many leading writers. In May 1906, he commissioned Jack London to cover the San Francisco earthquake, a report accompanied by 16 pages of pictures. Under Hapgood's guidance, Collier's began publishing the work of investigative journalists such as Samuel Hopkins Adams, Ray Stannard Baker, C. P. Connolly and Ida Tarbell. Hapgood's approach had great impact, resulting in such changes as the reform of the child labor laws, slum clearance and women's suffrage. In April 1905, an article by Upton Sinclair, "Is Chicago Meat Clean?", persuaded the Senate to pass the 1906 Meat Inspection Act.
Starting October 7, 1905, Adams startled readers with "The Great American Fraud", an 11-part Collier's series. Analyzing the contents of popular patent medicines, Adams pointed out that the companies producing these medicines were making false claims about their products and some were health hazards. Hapgood launched the series with the following editorial: