Detective Tales

Midway in the Golden Age of Pulp Magazines, Detective Tales put out 12 tiny book supplements to the magazine.  These books were only 2¾ x 4¼ inches, printed on poor paper, and bound with double staples.  

So flimsy, they were as ephemeral as butterfly wings.  How could a full dozen have lasted through more than 90 years and found their way to riverrrun?  Perhaps it was the tough guy writing that kept them intact.

Each little book has a dramatically illustrated cover and contains a hot-action novelette or condensed novel.  Each is 64 thin pages of text with slightly heavier covers.  Just holding one of these gems brings you back in time.  They were published 1922 - 1924.  Prohibition.  Rampant crime.  Women gone mad with suffrage, smoking on street corners and whatnot.  Corruption.  Betrayal.  Homicide.  Irresistible reading pleasure!

The tiny book supplements to Detective Tales were published by Rural Publishing Company, founded by Jacob Clark Henneberg and J.M. Lansinger.  Rural published other pulp magazines as well, including the more enduring Weird Tales.  When the publishing company hit difficulties, the founding partners divided assets.  Lansinger kept Detective Tales and retained Edwin Baird as editor.  The magazine went through several name changes, but didn’t print little book supplements after 1924.

It is not only the action packed covers and swiftly moving stories that bring you right into the pulp world.  The advertisements do too.  Each little book has the same three ads.  On the inside front cover, you are invited - urged - to attend the University of Applied Sciences in Chicago to learn the skills for the fast-expanding field of the fingerprint expert.  As the ad says, it’s an uncrowded field and a wonderful opportunity.

On the back cover a 21 jewel Burlington watch beckons.  You can get this watch, plus a free book about watches, for only $1 down and an unspecified monthly payment for an unspecified number of months.

Sure.  Anyone would like a great fingerprinting career and who wouldn’t want a  classy 21 jewel watch?  My favorite advertisement, though, is on the inside back cover.  This ad explains that science has uncovered the secrets of Enrico Caruso’s beautiful singing voice.  For a fee, and no matter what your natural voice sounds like now, Prof. Feuchtinger of the Perfect Voice Institute can train you to sing like Caruso.

I’m sold.  These little books pack lots and lots of fast action, new career possibilities, a splendid watch, and a velvet Caruso-like singing voice. 

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related links:

Interesting article featuring Vincent Starret, Edwin Baird, & Sherlock Holmes - brief mention of Detective Tales and subsequent iterations of the magazine

http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/images/WickedBeginnings_Betzner.pdf

pulp magazine notes - includes an entry for Detective Tales

http://www.philsp.com/data/data380.html

fascinating history of the long-lived and much sought after magazine, Weird Tales, which was also a Rural Publications magazine and also first edited by Edwin Baird

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/troubled-history-weird-tales-magazine/

Pulp Magazine Project: “The Project is dedicated to fostering ties between communities of collectors, fans, and academics devoted to pulp magazines, and will offer opportunities for research and collaboration to both scholars and enthusiasts alike. “

http://www.pulpmags.org/default.htm

google books: Caruso

https://books.google.com/books?id=wbgLIMjkfpMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Frances Steloff - Gotham Book Mart

     In 1920 when she was 32, Frances Steloff opened Gotham Book and Art shop.  It was a risky adventure.  She didn't have much money.  Her first store was a small basement rental in the theater district.  She had a great love and awe of books, and she owned a couple of hundred volumes of literature, poetry, art and dance.  That was her initial stock.

      Steloff was clever and savvy and energetic.  She added the kind of books that theater goers would like.  She chatted up browsers.  The browsers bought.  She was starting to be a success.

      Later that first year Steloff took on David Moss as a business partner.  Frances Steloff liked the avante-garde, the experimental.  She didn't like censorship, but it was really Moss who pushed the banned books.  They bought them from Europe.  They defied the censors and offered them for sale in Gotham.  Both Steloff and Moss were prosecuted for selling obscenity but neither served jail time.  They were fined and warned.

     In 1923 Frances Steloff and David Moss married.  To celebrate they sailed off to Europe for an extended book buying jaunt.  They bought banned books and made fast friends of the authors.

     Back in NYC they moved to larger quarters on 47th Street, changed the name to Gotham Book Mart, and Moss designed the famous sign: Wise Men Fish Here.   What an incredibly great sign and slogan.

     The bookshop prospered.  The marriage didn't.  Steloff and Moss divorced in 1930.  Steloff resumed her role as sole force shaping the Gotham Book Mart.  She sold what she liked.   She stocked little magazines and art as well as books and broadsides.  She helped found the James Joyce Society which met in her store.  She befriended and aided authors and poets, dancers and artists.

     A partial list of Steloff's friends reads like the curriculum of some fascinating cross-disciplinary course:  ee cummings, Jean Cocteau, James Joyce, Marianne Moore, Tennessee Williams, Alan Ginsberg, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Lawrence Durrell, Salvadore Dali, Joseph Campbell, Martha Graham.  And many more.  She lent money and published books and promoted creative artists.  Steloff's Gotham Book Mart was a luminous mecca.  Authors and artists met in her store.

     Frances Steloff bought the brownstone on 47th Street when her store made a 3rd move to 41 47th.  She lived in an apartment upstairs.  The building was crammed with books and resonated with creative adventure.

     Frances Steloff overcame a difficult childhood of poverty and disappointment.  Gotham made money.  She overcame the grade school ceiling to her education.  Gotham breathed thought and knowledge.

     She had legendary literary figures as her friends and fans.  She became  a legendary figure herself.  She created and developed and nurtured a truly great book store: Gotham Book Mart.  

     

Bookleggers and Smuthounds, by Jay A. Gertzman an interesting book - includes some passages about Steloff and Moss

Our Joyce, by Joseph Kelly - ditto

website with photos and anecdotes of Frances Steloff