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A LOOK AT THE PULPS

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Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West between the years of 1860 and 1900. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 1900s and Louis L'Amour from the mid 20th century. The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the popularity of televised Westerns such as Bonanza. Readership began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s and has reached a new low in the 2000s. Most bookstores, outside of a few western states, only carry a small number of Western fiction books.

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1850s-1900

The Western got its start in the "penny dreadfuls" and later the "dime novels" that first began to be published in the mid-nineteenth century. These cheaply made books were published to capitalize on the many fanciful yet supposedly true stories that were being told about the mountain men, outlaws, settlers and lawmen who were taming the western frontier.

By 1900, the new medium of pulp magazines also helped to relate these adventures to easterners. Meanwhile, non-American authors like the German Karl May picked up the genre, went to full novel length, and made it hugely popular and successful in continental Europe from about 1880 on, though they were generally dismissed as trivial by the literary critics of the day.

[edit] 1900s-1930s

The western in American literature began to emerge with the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, particularly his Leatherstocking Tales. But The Virginian by Owen Wister, published in 1902, is considered by many to be the pioneering "literary" western novel, containing the core element of a rugged individual who stick to his guns in the face of trouble, neglecting chances to simply walk away. This seeming bundle of clichés was fresh and hugely popular in 1902, and elements of this formula appear in most Western stories ever since.

Popularity grew with the publication of Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage in 1912. When pulp magazines exploded in popularity in the 1920s, western fiction greatly benefited (as did the author Max Brand, who excelled at the western short story). The simultaneous popularity of Western movies in the 1920s also helped the genre.

[edit] 1940s and 1950s

In the 1940s several seminal westerns were published including The Ox-Bow Incident (1940) by Walter van Tilburg Clark, The Big Sky (1947) and The Way West (1949) by A.B. Guthrie, Jr., and Shane (1949) by Jack Schaefer. Many other western authors gained readership in the 1950s, such as Luke Short, Ray Hogan, and Louis L'Amour.

The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the tremendous number of westerns on television. The burnout of the American public on television westerns in the late 1960s seemed to have an effect on the literature as well, and interest in western literature began to wane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_fiction

WesternStory1940-07-27

The Western, a staple of the dime novels, came to pulp magazines when Street & Smith converted their Buffalo Bill Weekly dime novel series into Western Story Magazine. With a loyal audience already existing for tales of gunfights, Indian wars, and hairbreadth escapes, the leading Western pulps, such as Far West, Western Story, and Ranch Romances, easily sold 20 million copies per month. Gradually, the pulp Westerns deviated from the blood-and-thunder style of the dime novels as more pulp writers began to emulate the more restrained and polished style of best-selling Western novelists such as Owen Wister and Zane Grey (who had a number of his novels serialized in the pulps). One of the new breed of Western writers who got their start in the pulps was Louis L'Amour. In creating characters such as Hondo, L'Amour began to crystalize the Western hero. However, the most popular author of pulp Westerns was Frederick Faust, who wrote under numerous pseudonyms, but became best known as Max Brand. While some Western pulp writers strove for gritty realism, Brand elevated the cowboy of the Western pulps to a figure of mythic proportions that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the popular culture pantheon with the fantastic heroes of the adventure or single character pulps.

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From the pages of Spicy Adventure, Spicy Mystery, Spicy Detective, and
many more come stories where two fisted heroes are often faced with deadly
decisions with beautiful, scantily clad women hanging in the balance for the
victor. Although extremely tame by today's standards, this sub genre of the pulp
era became known as the most risque and forever placed its stamp on how the pulp

magazine era would be remembered. Spicy Western was produced by Culture Publications.

Now, let’s approach that word “spicy.” The Spicys frequently were sold under the counter – one more glance at that cover art and you can see why – and went for the comparatively high sum of 25 cents. Every story contained several references to female breasts – the size, appearance and feel thereof – but it’s all PG-13 stuff that would make most kids today giggle. Spicy Mystery was a weird menace title and so its tales often would contain a blend of sex and violence that some readers might still feel is objectionable. But not you.

MORE: http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/spicy-mystery-stories-feb-1936/

Cover from: http://lauriepowerswildwest.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

Wild West Weekly was created by Frank Tousey, a veteran dime novel publisher, in 1902. It had one hero, Billy West, who was also referred to as Young Wild West and was a throwback to Buffalo Bill. The periodical did well for a while, but circulation plummeted in the 1920s. Tousey was dead and his company was struggling. In 1927, Street and Smith Publications, a behemoth company that churned out more pulp fiction than any other publisher, bought the magazine from Tousey’s company and decided to revamp it into a weekly magazine featuring a variety of stories and heroes written by different authors.

Wild West Weekly’s popularity could be credited to its strong tradition of sticking to stories that did not stray far from the standard Western story format. They were geared towards a juvenile audience and were never short of fast moving plots and plenty of violence. Romantic subplots were rarely seen: young, attractive female characters who might threaten to distract the hero from his work were strongly frowned upon by readers. Wild West Weekly also did not frustrate their readers with stories with cliffhanger endings, forcing the reader to “wait until next week” to find out what happens to their hero. The vast majority of stories were complete, a feature the magazine prided itself upon.

MORE: http://www.pulpwriter.com/www.htm