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Caesar (title)

Caesar ( English pl. Caesars; Latin pl. Caesares; in Greek: Καῖσαρ Kaîsar) is a title of imperial character. It derives from the cognomen of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar. The change from being a surname to a title used by the Roman emperors can be traced to AD 68, following the fall of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. When used on its own, the title denoted heirs apparent, which would later adopt the title Augustus on accession. The title remained an essential part of the style of the emperors, and became the word for "emperor" in some languages, such as German (kaiser) and Russian (tsar).

Origins
The first known individual to bear the cognomen of "Caesar" was Sextus Julius Caesar, who is likewise believed to be the common ancestor of all subsequent Julii Caesares. Sextus's great-grandson was the dictator Gaius Julius Caesar, who seized control of the Roman Republic following his war against the Senate. He appointed himself as dictator perpetuo ("dictator in perpetuity"), a title he held for only about a month before he was assassinated in 44 BC. Julius Caesar's death did not lead to the restoration of the Republic, and instead led to the rise of the Second Triumvirate, which was made up of three generals, including Julius' adopted son Gaius Octavius.

Following Roman naming conventions, Octavius adopted the name of his adoptive father, thus also becoming "Gaius Julius Caesar", though he was often called "Octavianus" to avoid confusion. He styled himself simply as "Gaius Caesar" to emphasize his relationship with Julius Caesar. Eventually, distrust and jealousy between the triumvirs led to a lengthy civil war which ultimately ended with Octavius gaining control of the entire Roman world in 30 BC. In 27 BC, Octavius was given the honorific Augustus by the Senate, adopting the name of "Imperator Caesar Augustus". He had previously dropped all his names except for "Caesar", which he treated as a nomen, and had adopted the victory title imperator ("commander") as a new praenomen.

As a matter of course, Augustus's own adopted son and successor, Tiberius, followed his (step)father's example and bore the name "Caesar" following his adoption on 26 June 4 AD, restyling himself as "Tiberius Julius Caesar". Upon his own ascension to the throne, he styled himself as "Tiberius Caesar Augustus". The precedent was thus then set: the Emperor, styled as "Augustus", designated his successor by adopting him and giving him the name "Caesar".

The fourth Emperor, Claudius (in full, "Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus"), was the first to assume the name without having been adopted by the previous emperor. However, he was at least a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, being the maternal great-nephew of Augustus on his mother's side, the nephew of Tiberius, and the uncle of Caligula (who was also called "Gaius Julius Caesar"). Claudius, in turn, adopted his stepson and grand-nephew Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, giving him the name "Caesar" in addition to his own nomen, "Claudius". His stepson thus became "Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus".

Dynastic title
The first emperor to assume both the position and name without any real claim was Galba, who took the throne under the name "Servius Galba Caesar Augustus" following the death of Nero in AD 68. Galba helped solidify "Caesar" as the title of the designated heir by giving it to his own adopted heir, Piso Licinianus. His reign did not last long, however, and he was soon killed by Otho, who became "Marcus Otho Caesar Augustus". Otho was then defeated by Vitellius, who became "Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus", adopting the victory title "Germanicus" instead. Nevertheless, "Caesar" had become such an integral part of the imperial dignity that its place was immediately restored by Vespasian, who ended the civil war and established the Flavian dynasty in AD 69, ruling as "Imperator Caesar Vespasianus Augustus".

The placement of the name "Caesar" varied among the early emperors. It usually came right before the cognomen (Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian); a few placed it right after it (Galba, Otho, Nerva). The imperial formula was finally standardised during the reign of Antoninus Pius. Antoninus, born "Titus Aurelius Antoninus", became "Titus Aelius Caesar Antoninus" after his adoption but ruled as "Imperator Caesar Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius". The imperial formula thus became "Imperator Caesar [name] Augustus" for emperors. Heir-apparents added "Caesar" to their names, placing it after their cognomen. Caesars occasionally were given the honorific princeps iuventutis ("First among the Youth") and, starting with the 3rd century, nobilissimus ("Most Noble").

Crisis of the Third Century
The popularity of using the title caesar to designate heirs-apparent increased throughout the third century. Many of the soldier-emperors during the Crisis of the Third Century attempted to strengthen their legitimacy by naming their sons as heirs with the title of caesar, namely Maximinus Thrax, Philip the Arab, Decius, Trebonianus Gallus, Gallienus and Carus. With the exception of Verus Maximus and Valerian II all of them were later either promoted to the rank of augustus within their father's lifetime (like Philip II) or succeeded as augusti after their father's death (Hostilian and Numerian). The same title would also be used in the Gallic Empire, which operated autonomously from the rest of the Roman Empire from 260 to 274, with the final Gallic emperor Tetricus I appointing his heir Tetricus II as caesar and his consular colleague.

Despite the best efforts of these emperors, however, the granting of this title does not seem to have made succession in this chaotic period any more stable. Almost all caesares would be killed before, or alongside, their fathers, or, at best, outlive them for a matter of months, as in the case of Hostilian. The sole caesar to successfully obtain the rank of augustus and rule for some time in his own right was Gordian III, and even he was heavily controlled by his court.

Tetrarchy and Diarchy
In 293, Diocletian established the Tetrarchy, a system of rule by two senior emperors and two junior colleagues. The two coequal senior emperors were styled identically to previous Emperors, as augustus (in plural, augusti). The two junior colleagues were styled identically to previous Emperors-designate, as nobilissimus caesar. Likewise, the junior colleagues retained the title caesar upon becoming full emperors. The caesares of this period are sometimes referred as "emperors", with the Tetrarchy being a "rule of four emperors", despite being clearly subordinate of the augusti and thus not actually sovereigns.

The Tetrarchy collapsed as soon as Diocletian stepped down in 305, resulting in a lengthy civil war. Constantine reunited the Empire 324, after defeating the Eastern emperor Licinius. The tetrarchic division of power was abandoned, although the divisions of the praetorian prefectures were maintained. The title caesar continued to be used, but now merely as a ceremorial honorific for young heirs. Constantine had four caesares at the time of his death: his sons Constantius II, Constantine II, Constans and his nephew Dalmatius, with his eldest son Crispus having been executed in mysterious circumstances earlier in his reign. He would be succeeded only by his three sons, with Dalmatius dying in the summer of 337 in similarly murky circumstances. Constantius II himself would nominate as caesares his cousins Constantius Gallus and Julian in succession in the 350s, although he first executed Gallus and then found himself at war with Julian before his own death. After Julian's revolt of 360, the title fell out of imperial fashion for some time, with emperors preferring simply to elevate their sons directly to augustus, starting with Gratian in 367.

The title would be revived in 408 when Constantine III gave it to his son Constans II, and then in 424 when Theodosius II gave it to his nephew Valentinian III before successfully installing him upon the western throne as augustus in 425. Thereafter it would receive limited use in the Eastern Empire; for example, it was given to Leo II in 472 several months before his grandfather's death. In the Western Empire, Palladius, the son of emperor Petronius Maximus, became the last person bearing the title caesar in 455.

Byzantine Empire
Caesar or Kaisar (Καῖσαρ) remained a senior court title in the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. Originally, as in the classical Roman Empire, it was used for the heir apparent, and was first among the "awarded" dignities. From the reign of Theodosius I, however, most emperors chose to solidify the succession of their intended heirs by raising them to co-emperors, i.e. augustus. Hence the title was more frequently awarded to second- and third-born sons, or to close and influential relatives of the Emperor: for example, Alexios Mosele who was the son-in-law of Theophilos (ruled 829–842), Bardas who was the uncle and chief minister of Michael III (r. 842–867), and Nikephoros II (r. 963–969) who awarded the title to his father, Bardas Phokas. An exceptional case was the conferment of the dignity and its insignia to the Bulgarian khan Tervel by Justinian II (r. 685–695, 705–711) who had helped him regain his throne in 705. The title was awarded to the brother of Empress Maria of Alania, George II of Georgia in 1081.

The office enjoyed extensive privileges, great prestige and power. When Alexios I Komnenos created the title of sebastokrator, kaisar became third in importance, and fourth after Manuel I Komnenos created the title of despot, which it remained until the end of the Empire. The feminine form was kaisarissa. It remained an office of great importance, usually awarded to imperial relations, as well as a few high-ranking and distinguished officials, and only rarely awarded to foreigners.

According to the Klētorologion of 899, the Byzantine caesars insignia were a crown without a cross, and the ceremony of a caesars creation (in this case dating to Constantine V), is included in De Ceremoniis I.43. The title remained the highest in the imperial hierarchy until the introduction of the sebastokratōr (a composite derived from sebastos and autokrator, the Greek equivalents of augustus and imperator) by Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) and later of despotēs by Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–1180). The title remained in existence through the last centuries of the Empire. In the Palaiologan period, it was held by prominent nobles such as Alexios Strategopoulos, but from the 14th century, it was mostly awarded to rulers of the Balkans such as the princes of Vlachia, Serbia and Thessaly.

In the late Byzantine hierarchy, as recorded in the mid-14th century Book of Offices of pseudo-Kodinos, the rank continued to come after the sebastokratōr. Pseudo-Kodinos further records that the caesar was equal in precedence to the panhypersebastos, another creation of Alexios I, but that Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259–1282) had raised his nephew Michael Tarchaneiotes to the rank of protovestiarios and decreed that to come after the caesar; while under Andronikos II Palaiologos (r. 1282–1328) the megas domestikos was raised to the same eminence, when it was awarded to the future emperor John VI Kantakouzenos (r. 1347–1354). According to pseudo-Kodinos, the caesar's insignia under the Palaiologoi was a skiadion hat in red and gold, decorated with gold-wire embroideries, with a veil bearing the wearer's name and pendants identical to those of the despotēs and the sebastokratōr. He wore a red tunic (rouchon) similar to the emperor's (without certain decorations), and his shoes and stockings were blue, as were the accouterments of his horse; these were all identical to those of the sebastokratōr, but without the embroidered eagles of the latter. Pseudo-Kodinos writes that the particular forms of another form of hat, the domed skaranikon, and of the mantle, the tamparion, for the caesar were not known.

Ottoman Empire
"Caesar" is the title officially used by the Sasanid Persians to refer to the Roman and Byzantine emperors. In the Middle East, the Persians and the Arabs continued to refer to the Roman and Byzantine emperors as "Caesar" (in Qaysar-i Rum, "Caesar of the Romans", from Middle Persian kēsar). Thus, following the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the victorious Ottoman sultan Mehmed II became the first of the rulers of the Ottoman Empire to assume the title (in قیصر روم Kayser-i Rûm).

After the Fall of Constantinople, having conquered the Byzantine Empire, Mehmed took the title Kayser-i Rûm, claiming succession to the Roman imperium. His claim was that, by possession of the city, he was emperor, a new dynast by conquest, as had been done previously by the likes of Heraclius and Leo III. Contemporary scholar George of Trebizond wrote "the seat of the Roman Empire is Constantinople ... and he who is and remains Emperor of the Romans is also the Emperor of the whole world".

Gennadius II, a staunch antagonist of the West because of the Sack of Constantinople committed by the Western Catholics and theological controversies between the two Churches, had been enthroned the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople-New Rome with all the ceremonial elements and ethnarch (or milletbashi) status by the Sultan himself in 1454. In turn, Gennadius II formally recognized Mehmed as successor to the throne. Mehmed also had a blood lineage to the Byzantine Imperial family; his predecessor, Sultan Orhan had married a Byzantine princess, and Mehmed may have claimed descent from John Tzelepes Komnenos. Ottoman sultans were not the only rulers to claim such a title, as there was the Holy Roman Empire in Western Europe, whose emperor, Frederick III, traced his titular lineage from Charlemagne who obtained the title of Roman Emperor when he was crowned by Pope Leo III in 800, although he was never recognized as such by the Byzantine Empire.

In diplomatic writings between the Ottomans and Austrians, the Ottoman bureaucracy was angered by their use of the Caesar title when the Ottomans saw themself as the true successors of Rome. When war broke out and peace negotiations were done, the Austrians (Holy Roman Empire) agreed to give up the use of the Caesar title according to Treaty of Constantinople (1533) (though they would continue to use it and the Roman imperial title until the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806). The Russians, who defined Moscow as the Third Rome, were similarly sanctioned by the Ottomans, who ordered the Crimean Khanate to raid Russia on numerous occasions. The Ottomans would lose their political superiority over the Holy Roman Empire with the Treaty of Zsitvatorok in 1606, and over the Russian Empire with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774, by diplomatically recognising the monarchs of these two countries as equals to the Ottoman Sultan for the first time.

List of holders
Note: Caesars who later became Augusti and thus emperors are highlighted in bold.

 * Byzantine nobles
 * Tervel, khan of the Bulgars, named in 705 by Justinian II
 * Nikephoros & Christopher, named on 2 April 769 by their father Constantine V
 * Alexios Mosele, likely named in 831 by his father-in-law Theophilos
 * Bardas, named on 22 April 862 by his nephew Michael III
 * Romanos I Lekapenos, named on 24 September 920 by the Byzantine senate
 * Bardas Phokas, named in late 963 by his son Nikephoros II
 * Romanos III Argyros, named on 9 November 1028 by his father-in-law Constantine VIII
 * Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger, named by his father-in-law Alexios I
 * John Doukas, named in 1074 by his brother Constantine X
 * George II of Georgia, named in 1081 by his brother-in-law Nikephoros III
 * Nikephoros Melissenos, named in 1080 by Alexios I
 * Isaac Komnenos, named in 1104 by his father Alexios I
 * John Rogerios Dalassenos, named c. 1130 by his father-in-law John II
 * Renier of Montferrat, named in 1180 by his father-in-law Manuel I
 * John Kantakouzenos, named in 1186 by Isaac II
 * Conrad of Montferrat, named in 1187 by his father-in-law Isaac II
 * Manuel Maurozomes, named c. 1200 by Alexios III
 * Leo Gabalas, named by Theodore I Laskaris (r. 1205–1221)
 * Constantine Palaiologos, named in 1259 by his brother Michael VIII
 * Alexios Strategopoulos, named in 1259 by Michael VIII
 * Roger de Flor, leader of the Catalan Company, named in 1304 by Andronikos II
 * John Palaiologos, named in 1326 by his uncle Andronikos II
 * Hrelja, likely named by John VI Kantakouzenos (r. 1347–1354)

 * Serbian rulers
 * Alexios Angelos Philanthropenos, named in 1373 by despot Thomas Preljubović
 * Manuel Angelos Philanthropenos, named in 1390 by despot Esau de' Buondelmonti
 * Grgur Golubić, named in 1347 by Stefan Uroš IV Dušan
 * Vojihna, named in 1347 by Uroš IV
 * Preljub, named in 1348–49 by Uroš IV
 * Uglješa Vlatković, named by Uroš V
 * Nikola Radonja, named by Uroš V
 * Novak, named by Uroš V

 * Ottoman rulers
 * Mehmed II (r. 1451–1481) assumed title kayser-i Rûm following the conquest of Constantinople in 1452
 * Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512) is addressed as kayser in contemporary sources
 * Suleiman I (r. 1520–1566) called himself "Caesar of Rome" in the inscription of Bender, Moldova, dating from . In one of his poems, he also called himself "Roman caesar".
 * See List of sultans of the Ottoman Empire; the title kayser continued to be used as late as the 18th century.

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Francysk Skaryna

Francysk Skaryna (alternative transcriptions of his name: Francišak Skaryna or Francisk Skaryna;, Францыск (Францішак) Скарына ; Pranciškus Skorina; Franciszek Skaryna, František Skorina; 1470 – 1551/29 January 1552) was a Belarusian humanist, physician, and translator. He is known to be one of the first book printers in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in all of Eastern Europe, laying the groundwork for the development of the Belarusian version of Church Slavonic of the Church Slavonic language.

Early life and education
Skaryna was born into a wealthy family from Polotsk, which was then a major trade and manufacturing center of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His father, Luka Skaryna, was a merchant, who dealt with someone known as Doronya Ivanov, from Velikiye Luki. Skaryna's older brother, Ivan, was also a merchant. The brothers owned property, possibly ancestral, in Polotsk.

Research indicates that Skaryna was born in 1470. The year 1490 is often proposed based on the assumption that he was 14 when he came to study in Kraków in 1504. The date is an upper boundary; while new students younger than 14 were rare, older ones were not unusual, and Skaryna could have started his studies at the age of 18 or even older. Mikalai Shchakatsikhin suggested that the overlapping sun and moon on Skaryna's personal emblem indicates that he was born around the time of the 1486 solar eclipse, which was observed in Polotsk.

It is believed that he received his primary education in Polotsk and possibly in Vilnius. In 1504, Skaryna is recorded as a student at Jagiellonian University. In 1506, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1512, after passing all required tests, he received a doctorate in medicine at the University of Padua in Italy. Records suggest that he requested to take his examination in Padua but had not studied in the city. Earlier, he obtained an "artium doctor" degree, but the exact date and place are unknown.

Later life
Skaryna arrived in Prague by 1517. According to one hypothesis, he had been a student at Charles University in Prague, but there is no documentary evidence of this. In the same year, he rented a printing house from a merchant named Severin in Prague and started publishing a new translation of the Bible with his own prefaces.

On 6 August 1517, his first edition, Psalter (Skaryna, 1517), was released. "The Psalter" comprises nearly all of the biblical books of Holy Scripture. He released new books periodically over the next few months (10 September, 6 October, 5 December, 2 January 1518, 9 January, and 19 January). Then, on 10 August 1518, he published four books at the same time. The culmination of his life's work was printing a translation of the Bible in twenty-three books from 1517 to 1519.

In 1522, Skaryna opened the first printing house in Vilnius. He published "The Little Travel Book", followed by "Apostol" in 1525. "Apostol" was released in the same order as it is used in Orthodox worship now.

In the late 1520s or early 1530s, he visited Moscow. He wished to distribute his books in Moscow but was unsuccessful.

Skaryna married Margarita, the widow of a Vilnius city councilor. In 1529, following his brother's death, he went to Poznań and obtained a share of Ivan's property. In 1530, he moved with his wife to Königsberg, but they soon returned to Vilnius.

In 1532, he worked as a doctor and secretary to John, Bishop of Vilnius. After two years, creditors of his late brother Ivan considered Skaryna as the brother's primary heir, and imprisoned him in Poznań. He was there for several months. Roman Skaryna, Ivan's son and Francysk's nephew, actively helped his uncle, meeting with King Sigismund I. When Skaryna was released, he sent a complaint letter with a counterclaim against the creditors to the King. In response to the letter, he was awarded two royal privilege certificates (dated 21 and 25 November 1532). These certificates exempted him from the jurisdiction of all authorities except the King.

The last information about Skaryna is mentioned in the archives of 1534. He moved from Vilnius to Prague. He probably served in the royal garden in Prague until his death. According to some theories, Skaryna taught as a professor at Charles University in Prague. He is presumed to have died sometime between 1551 and January 29, 1552.

In 1552, his son Simeon Rus Skaryna received a royal certificate, according to which he, as the sole heir, was given all of the property of his father. The property included manuscripts, letters, and books.

Religion
It is not known for certain whether Skaryna was Catholic or Orthodox. His name is Catholic, but it is often suggested that he changed it before entering the university. A single copy of a document in which he is called Georgius Franciscus instead of just Franciscus gave birth to a theory that Georgius was his original name; today, however, it is mostly accepted to be a scribe's error (the presumed correct reading being egregius Franciscus, "venerable Francysk"). In any case, the once popular theory that he changed his name from Georgius to Franciscus to be able to enter the university is unsupported by evidence: the name Georgius was equally popular among the Catholic and the Orthodox in the region, and in Skaryna's year there were more students named Georgius than Franciscus in Kraków.

In 1552, after Skaryna's death (and long after his final departure from the country) King Sigismund August mentioned in a letter that a man from his country printed a translation of the Bible and tried to sell his edition in Moscow, but the books had been burned there because they had been produced "by a subject of the Roman Church". The books mentioned in the letter are most probably Skaryna's.

Publishing activities
Skaryna devoted his life to the publication of the biblical texts. He sought to make the Bible more available to the common people and write it in an accessible language. Skaryna also composed prefaces to his editions, in which he emphasized that the purpose of his publishing activities was to help ordinary people "become acquainted with wisdom and science". He contributed to the development of the Belarusian literary language. This Bible became the second printed Bible in the Slavic world, following the publication of a Czech edition.

Books
In 1517, Skaryna started his publishing career in Prague. He printed his Psalter, and then twenty-two books of the Old Testament under the shared name Biblia Ruska. His books were different from the Western European printed Bibles of that time, in that they were all published in the quarto format. Skaryna's editions of the Bible were printed in the Church Slavonic language with many Ruthenian words. Belarusian linguists can also identify the influence of the Polish and Czech languages.

Skaryna's books contributed to the development of the Belarusian redaction of Church Slavonic of the Church Slavonic language.

Skaryna's Bible challenged the existing rules of that time. It contains text from the publisher, his comments, forewords, and afterwords. In addition, it contains prints with his image. It is the only such case in the history of the publication of Bibles in Eastern Europe.

All of Skaryna's editions are very rare today, especially those published in Vilnius. Copies are stored in libraries in Minsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Vilnius, Lviv, London, Prague, Copenhagen, and Kraków.

Legacy
The language in which Francysk Skaryna printed his books was based on Church Slavonic, but with a large number of Belarusian words, and therefore was most understandable to the inhabitants of the Ruthenian lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the territory of modern Belarus). Skaryna was one of the pioneers of publishing in Cyrillic script, but not the first: the Oktoikh was published by Schweipolt Fiol in 1491. While he used an Eastern Slavic language, it is difficult to determine precisely what language he used, since there was no standard Belarusian language at that time. Some researchers maintain that Skaryna's books were in Church Slavonic heavily saturated with Ruthenian.

Some Belarusian scholars see Skaryna as a Renaissance man, on par with Copernicus and Erasmus, whose work in the Slavic lands was a part of the European Reformation.

At different times five streets in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, were named after Francysk Skaryna; only one left on the map: the Old Barysau Way (Starabarysauski trakt) was renamed to Skaryna Street (Minsk) (vulica Skaryny) in 2005. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Leninsky Avenue, the main avenue of Minsk was renamed to the Skaryna Avenue. However, in 2005, under the rule of Alexander Lukashenko, it was renamed to the Independence Avenue. Streets are named after Francysk Skaryna in many other cities of Belarus, including Polatsk, Vitebsk, Nesvizh, Orsha, Slutsk.

Two awards are given in Belarus in honor of Skaryna: the Medal of Francysk Skaryna, and the Order of Francysk Skaryna. There are monuments to Francysk Skaryna in Polotsk, Minsk, Lida, Vilnius, Chisinau, and Prague.

Several cultural organizations are named for Skaryna, particularly the Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society in Belarus, and the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum in London. Homyel State University is named for Skaryna.

In 1969, Boris Stepanov filmed a movie "Я, Францыск Скарына" ("I, Francysk Skaryna").

In 1991, Skaryna was depicted on the Soviet Union one-ruble coin.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Francysk Skaryna


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Argosy (magazine)

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.

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. 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. His original plan for the magazine had been to make it a close copy of Golden Days, a weekly paper for children published in Philadelphia by James Elverson, and to include lithographed covers and internal illustrations. He abandoned these ideas and came up with a simplified approach, still based on Golden Days, that he believed could be made profitable. He wrote to the stockbroker who had promised $2,500 to get the funds sent to him, but received no reply, and since this made it impossible to start the magazine as planned, Munsey released his New York friend from his promise of investment. This left Munsey with only about $40 ($ in ), along with the manuscripts he had in hand, which had cost over $500 to acquire. He began looking for a publisher who would back the new magazine, and eventually persuaded E. G. Rideout to take it on. The first issue, titled The Golden Argosy, with Munsey as editor and manager, was dated December 9, 1882; it was eight pages long and cost five cents ($ in ). Subscribers were offered a set of colored chromolithographs along with their subscription.

Five months later Rideout went bankrupt. Munsey had not drawn all his salary, and Rideout had borrowed money from him as well, so he was owed about $1,000 ($ in ) by the bankrupt company. He claimed the magazine's title and subscription list in return for his debt, succeeding over a competing claim from a publisher who would have merged the magazine's subscriptions into those of his own publication. 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.

A friend from Augusta, John Fogler, who had become cashier of Augusta's First National Bank, was able to arrange another loan for Munsey, of $1,000. Munsey managed to maintain the regular weekly schedule but the financial pressure on him was enormous. Rideout had set up Munsey in an office on Barclay Street in what is now known as Tribeca, in Manhattan; Munsey moved to an office on Warren Street nearby to reduce the rent, and he and Douglas would eat in a German beer saloon where they could get a free lunch. Munsey and Douglas assembled free material by rewriting items from English boys' papers. One week, Douglas was unable to find enough material to fill an issue. Munsey wrote a short story that night: "Harry's Scheme, or Camping Among the Maples", about two boys in the Maine woods, and turned it in to Douglas the next morning. 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.

In 1884 James Blaine was the Republican candidate for President. Blaine knew of Munsey from Augusta, and his campaign needed help with publicity: Munsey proposed a new magazine, Munsey's Illustrated Weekly, to carry campaign news. It only lasted two months, from September 6 to November 8, 1884, but it helped Munsey by giving him an official-seeming presence in publishing that made it much easier for him to obtain credit for paper and other supplies. 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". Munsey told a story of being unable to meet payroll because the New York bank would not give him credit. He went to the bank, upbraided the president for his "effrontery", and left without letting the man speak. When his employee went to the bank again that day, he was able to cash the payroll check.

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. A new editor, Matthew White, took over from Douglas at the end of the year; White had been the founder and editor of The Boys' World, which Munsey bought in 1887, merging the subscriptions with The Golden Argosy. 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 '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.

The Argosy
The improvement in Munsey's finances in 1887 was temporary, though before Munsey realized it he had given up his cheap rooms and moved to the Windsor Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Another advertising campaign was launched; it cost $20,000 ($ in ) but produced no results, and Munsey began to experiment with the magazine, trying to find a profitable approach. He shortened the title to just The Argosy with the December 1, 1888 issue to make it sound more like an adventure magazine and less like a children's paper. He later commented that he had not realized the problems attendant on magazines for children—they grew up quickly and dropped their subscriptions, so circulation was very difficult to maintain, and because they had little spending power it was hard to interest advertisers. He reduced the page size and increased the page count, and added illustrated covers, and cut the price, and then reversed all these changes, but nothing worked. In 1890 circulation dropped to the point where it no longer covered its own costs. The expenses Munsey had taken on after the successful campaign in 1887 were now a drain, and when his friend Fogler visited, and was impressed that Munsey was living at the Windsor, he told Fogler, "I can't afford it ... but it is a means to an end. It gives me standing to have the acquaintance of the men I meet here." Fogler also discovered on that visit that Munsey had a personal pew in a popular church, which cost him $1,000 ($ in ) a year.

Munsey launched two more periodicals, hoping that they would establish themselves as profitable before The Argosy failed completely. The first was Munsey's Weekly, launched on February 2, 1889; the second was a newspaper, the Daily Continent, which he took over in February 1891 and gave up on four months later. The Weekly was not a success either, and in late 1891 Munsey converted it into a monthly, Munsey's Magazine, priced at twenty-five cents ($ in ). Fogler, now working for a bank in Kansas, arranged a loan for Munsey that grew to $8,000 ($ in ), with half Munsey's stock as collateral. During the Panic of 1893 the bank called in the loan, and Munsey offered Fogler the stock if he would take over the loan. Fogler declined, and Munsey had to arrange for another loan at 18% interest to cover the repayment. In October1893 Munsey cut the price of Munsey's Magazine to ten cents ($ in ). He had to struggle to distribute it at this price, since the American News Company had a monopoly on magazine distribution and had little interest in a low-priced magazine. By the February issue Munsey was printing 200,000 copies, and it soon became successful enough to guarantee his financial security.

The Argosy did not share in the success of Munsey's Magazine; circulation continued to decline, but Munsey kept it going, as he later said, "as a matter of sentiment", and to see what could be made of it. From a high of 115,000 the circulation fell to 9,000 for the March 24, 1894 issue, which was the last one as a weekly. Munsey switched it to monthly publication with the April issue, and circulation jumped to 40,000 immediately, but went no higher for over two years. With the October1896 issue Munsey changed it to carry fiction only, targeted at adults rather than children. Starting with the December issue he began printing it on cheap wood-pulp paper, making The Argosy the first pulp magazine. The all-fiction format brought about another jump in circulation to 80,000. In 1898, with circulation still at around 80,000, Munsey bought Peterson's Magazine and merged it into The Argosy. A year or so later circulation began to climb again: Munsey spent nothing on advertising, but circulation reached 300,000 in 1902, and hit half a million in 1907, 25 years after it was launched. The magazine absorbed two other Munsey publications, The Puritan and Junior Munsey, in 1902, and Munsey credited some of the increase in circulation to the mergers.

The Argosy 's circulation fell from this peak, and it returned to a weekly schedule in 1917. In 1906 Munsey had started The Railroad Man's Magazine, which carried both fiction and non-fiction; after the January 18, 1919 issue it was merged into The Argosy, which was briefly retitled Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine, reverting to just Argosy with the May 31 issue. Paper shortages caused by World War I forced a reduction in the page count of both The Argosy and All-Story Weekly, another Munsey fiction magazine, and costs continued to go up after the war. Most of the other major fiction magazines of the day increased their price to twenty cents ($ in ). At fifteen cents, Top-Notch Magazine was an exception, but Munsey kept both Argosy and All-Story at only ten cents. In 1920 he merged All-Story Weekly into The Argosy, explaining that this let him keep the price of the combined magazine at ten cents, while saving "all the cost of stories in one magazine, all the cost of the editorial force, all the cost of typesetting, all the cost of making electrotype plates, and many other minor costs". Sam Moskowitz, a magazine historian, argues that the low price, sustained through most of the 1920s, must have been a strong benefit to circulation, which is reported to have reached half a million when the combined magazine, now titled Argosy All-Story Weekly, debuted. Circulation stayed at about 400,000 during the following decade. The first issue of the new magazine added pages to allow it to carry continuations of the serials that had been running in each of the two magazines before the merger, and Moskowitz comments that this approach "was such that it is doubtful that a single nonduplicating reader was lost from either magazine". The page count gradually dropped again as the serials were completed, from 224 after the merger to 144 at the end of the year.

Dewart, Popular Publications, and later revivals
In December 1925 Munsey had appendicitis, and never recovered; he died, aged 71, on December 22. The Frank A. Munsey Corporation, which continued as the publisher, was sold to William Dewart, who had been working for Munsey. Matthew White, who had been editor since 1886, was finally replaced by A. H. Bittner in 1928. Bittner stayed as editor for three years; and his successors throughout the 1930s each lasted between one and three years. In October1929 Munsey's Magazine and Argosy All-Story Weekly were combined and immediately split again into two magazines: one was titled All-Story Combined with Munsey's, and the other continued as Argosy.

In 1932 Don Moore, who had become editor in July1931, bought two stories from Frank Morgan Mercer that turned out to have been copied from earlier stories by H. Bedford-Jones and James Francis Dwyer. Up to this point Argosy paid on acceptance; because of the plagiarism the policy was changed to pay new authors only after publication, to allow plagiarism to be detected.

Moore left to work at Cosmopolitan in mid-1934, and was replaced by Frederick Clayton, who had been associate editor. In 1936 Clayton was hired by Liberty, and Jack Byrne, who had been working at Fiction House, took over as editor for a year before being replaced by Chandler Whipple. Another Munsey magazine, All-American Fiction, was merged into Argosy in 1938. In 1939 Whipple resigned and George Post, who had been part of Whipple's editorial team, became editor.

Argosy remained a weekly until the October 4, 1941 issue, then switched to an irregular schedule with two issues a month. Post left in early 1942, and was briefly replaced by Harry Gray and then for two issues by Burroughs Mitchell.

In September1942 Popular Publications, a pulp magazine publisher, bought all the Munsey pulp magazine titles from Dewart, including Argosy, which by this time had a circulation of only 40,000 to 50,000. The new editor was Rogers Terrill. Argosy ceased to use pulp paper from 1943, becoming a slick magazine. In early 1944 Harry Steeger, the owner of Popular, took over the editorship for five years, hiring Jerry Mason away from This Week in 1949 to replace himself as editor. Mason stayed for four years; when he left in mid-1953 Howard Lewis was promoted to editor from executive editor. Lewis resigned in 1954, and Ken Purdy, the editor of Argosy 's main rival, True, was hired,  but stayed less than a year. James O'Connell, who had been fiction editor of Argosy since 1948, was editor for one issue, dated October 1954, and then Steeger took the editing chair again. Circulation prospered under Popular, reaching 600,000 in June1948, and 1.25million by 1954. This growth was aided by some lucky publicity, broadcast to millions of radio listeners: after the acquisition by Popular, Argosy was the subject of a question on the popular Take It or Leave It radio show, which referred to it as a pulp magazine. Two weeks later the show's host apologized, and asked the studio audience to chant "Argosy is a slick" on the air.

Argosy's circulation remained over a million until at least 1973, and the advertising revenue this provided made the magazine an attractive acquisition target. Steeger sold Popular Publications to David Geller's Brookside Publications in 1972. In early January 1978 Geller sold the company to the Filipacchi Group. The last issue from Popular was dated November/December1978.

Special issues, associated magazines, and revivals
In addition to the monthly issues, between 1975 and 1978 Argosy published about fifty special issues on specific topics such as sharks, basketball, guns, or treasure hunting. There were also two associated magazines: Argosy UFO appeared in July 1976 and ceased publication with its eighth issue, dated Winter 1977/1978. Argosy Gun produced four issues dated from Fall 1977 and Summer 1978, and may have published more.

Argosy has been revived four times. Four monthly issues appeared starting in August1979, published by Lifetime Wholesalers, Inc. The last issue was dated November1979. Between 1989 and 1994, six issues were produced by Richard Kyle, at irregular intervals. Three more issues, dated in 2004 and 2005, appeared from Lou Anders and James A. Owen, with the third issue edited by Owen alone, and retitled Argosy Quarterly. One more issue, from Altus Press, appeared in 2016, edited by Matthew Moring.

Early years
The first issue of The Golden Argosy included the first installment of two novels: Do and Dare, or a Brave Boy's Fight for a Fortune, by Horatio Alger, which took the cover page, and Nick and Nellie, or God Helps them that Helps Themselves, by Edward S. Ellis. There were also short stories and some non-fiction. The target audience was both boys and girls, from ten to twenty years old. When Munsey began to write serialized novels for the magazine, starting with Afloat in a Great City in 1886, he used the same basic plot that Alger had been successful with: rags to riches stories of boys succeeding against the odds. Other early serials were boys' adventure tales, occasionally with science fiction ideas such as lost races. Multiple serials often ran simultaneously. Early contributors included Harry Castlemon, whose Don Gordon's Shooting-Box began serialization in the March 3, 1883 issue; Frank H. Converse, who in addition to an early serial (A Voyage to the Gold Coast, or Jack Bond's Quest, beginning in the March 24, 1883 issue) had several short stories in the first couple of years of the magazine; Oliver Optic, (Making a Man of Himself, beginning in the October 20, 1883 issue); and G. A. Henty (Facing Peril: A Tale of the Coal Mines, from September 5, 1885).

The magazine's subtitle, Freighted with Treasures for Boys and Girls, was dropped in 1886, though the contents were still aimed at the same youthful readers as before. P. T. Barnum's Dick Broadhead: a Story of Wild Animals and the Circus was serialized from May to August 1887. There was little science fiction in the early years; one exception was The Conquest of the Moon, by Andre Laurie, which began serialization in The Argosy in 1889; another was William Murray Graydon's The River of Darkness; or, Under Africa (1890). "When the Redcoats Came to Bennington", an early story by Upton Sinclair, appeared in the December 1895 issue.

Editorial policy
After the change to an all-fiction monthly format in 1896, The Argosy was a men's and boy's adventure magazine, though The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes many of the serials in the first decade or so after the change as "still only a little above juvenile adventure stories". In 1926, Albert William Stone, a fairly prolific pulp author, visited Manhattan to meet with the editors of the various magazines he had been selling to, and find out more about what their requirements were for submissions. Stone had sold several stories to Bob Davis, the editor of All-Story Weekly, before its merger with The Argosy, but had never sold to Matthew White, who had been editor of The Argosy since before the change to pulp format. White had sent Stone an encouraging note in reply to an early submission of his: "Two things I like about this story are its Western atmosphere, and its brevity—two thousand five hundred words ... If those hints are of any value to you, try us again." In the interview with Stone, White expanded upon what he was looking for. "I require yarns ... that violate the traditions relative to 'logical development'. By this I mean that I do not want the story developed in what is commonly called the 'natural' way.  I require unexpected development—surprises at every turn it is possible to have them without destroying the convincingness of the story ... In other words, stories that are a constant challenge to the author's inventive ability, one situation after another, and that keep the writer perspiring freely."

Ed Hulse, a historian of pulp magazines, while generally praising the quality of the fiction in Argosy during the pulp era, comments that during the 1920s some "bland, conventional dramas" appeared in the magazine, by writers such as Edgar Franklin, Isabel Ostrander, and E. J. Rath. Hulse suggests that this editorial policy was aimed at attracting more women readers to the magazine.

After White's editorship, and for the next fifteen years, the requirements that Argosy 's editors sent to writers' magazines such as Writer's Digest and Author & Journalist emphasized that they were looking for stories focused on action, with a masculine point of view. Bittner's comments in 1928 asked for "any good clean story with sound plot, rapid-fire action and strong masculine appeal", and gave a long list of genres all of which were acceptable—even romance so long as "the love element is not unduly stressed". In 1931 Moore outlined the stories to be excluded: "love or domestic tales, sex stories, stories with a predominant woman interest or told from a woman’s viewpoint". In 1935 Clayton provided a list of hackneyed plots to be avoided, including escaping convicts, an underwater adventure in which the hero fights an octopus and a giant clam as well as the villain, and a legionnaire who "dies gloriously for Dear Old France". The policy of action stories told from a male viewpoint continued through the rest of the decade.

New writers
Many writers who later became well-known sold to The Argosy early in their careers. William MacLeod Raine's first story, "The Luck of Eustace Blount", appeared in the March 1899 issue. William Wallace Cook contributed numerous serials in the first decade of the 20th century, beginning with The Spur of Necessity in the September1900 issue after half-a-dozen sales to other markets. Cook wrote adventure fiction with elements of satire, an unusual combination for the pulps. James Branch Cabell's first sale was to The Argosy; his "An Amateur Ghost" appeared in the February1902 issue. William Hamilton Osborne's first sale was also to The Argosy, but after paying for it White returned the story to Osborne as the plot was too similar to other stories that had appeared elsewhere. It did eventually appear in the New York Daily News, but Osborne's first appearance in print was in The Argosy with "Turner's Luck with Rouge et Noir", in the September 1902 issue. Louis Joseph Vance, the creator of the character The Lone Wolf, published most of his fiction in The Popular Magazine, but his first two sales were to Munsey, including The Coil of Circumstance, a serial that began in the November 1903 Argosy. Albert Payson Terhune, later the author of Lad: A Dog, frequently published in the Munsey magazines early in his career. His first sale to The Argosy was "The Fugitive", a novella that began serialization in the August 1905 issue, and he sold a dozen more stories to the magazine over the next few years. An early story by Mary Roberts Rinehart, "The Misadventures of a Pearl Necklace", appeared in February the following year.

Science fiction and fantasy
The first pulp issue, in December 1896, included a science fiction story, "Citizen 504", by C. H. Palmer, and science fiction featured regularly thereafter. Five science fiction adventure novels by William Wallace Cook appeared, starting in 1903 with A Round Trip to the Year 2000, or A Flight Through Time. Lost race stories continued to appear, such as Frank Aubrey's A Queen of Atlantis (1899), Frank Savile's Beyond the Great South Wall (1899–1900), and Perley Poore Sheehan's The Abyss of Wonders (1915), described by Hulse as "arguably the finest lost race novel ever to appear in a Munsey magazine". Francis Stevens contributed another lost world novel, The Citadel of Fear, in 1918.

Humorous stories about scientific inventions were another theme. Howard Rogert Garis began selling to Argosy in 1904; his "Professor Jonkin" stories were lighthearted examples of the genre, and other examples came from H.D. Smiley, whose "Bagley's Coagulated Cyclone" and "Bagley's Rain-Machine" appeared in the September 1906 and February 1907 issues. Some more sophisticated science fiction also appeared, including "Finis", an end of the world story by Frank Lillie Pollock, in June 1906. George Griffith, an important early science fiction writer from the UK, published almost none of his work in the US in his lifetime. An exception was The Lake of Gold, serialized in The Argosy from December 1902 to July 1903, in which a group of Britons and Americans use the riches from a lake of gold in Patagonia to enforce peace across Europe.

The Argosy 's sister magazine, All-Story Weekly, was the venue for most of the science fiction in the Munsey magazines, but Argosy printed Murray Leinster's first science fiction story, "The Runaway Skyscraper", in 1919. Leinster's first sale, "The Atmosphere", had appeared in The Argosy the previous year. Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom series had begun in All-Story Weekly, as had his Tarzan novels; when the two magazines merged in 1920 later episodes of each series appeared in the combined magazine, Argosy All-Story Weekly. Abraham Merritt's The Metal Monster began serialization in the August 7 issue, the third one after the merger, and many more science fiction and fantasy stories followed in the next two decades by authors such as Ray Cummings, Ralph Milne Farley, Otis Adelbert Kline, Victor Rousseau, Eando Binder, Donald Wandrei, Manly Wade Wellman, Jack Williamson, Arthur Leo Zagat, and Henry Kuttner. Merritt's The Ship of Ishtar, which was serialized in 1924, was voted Argosy 's most popular story in a reader poll in 1938. In 1940 and 1941 Frederick C. Painton published a series of stories in Argosy about Joel Quaite, a time detective who travels into the past to solve mysteries.

Erle Stanley Gardner, later famous for his Perry Mason detective stories, sold "Rain Magic", his first science fiction short story, to Argosy in 1928, and went on to write several more. Gardner combined science fiction with detective plots in some of these stories, and he was not the only writer to do so: Garret Smith's "You've Killed Privacy!" in the July 7, 1928 Argosy was about using CCTV to catch criminals, and Leinster's "Darkness on Fifth Avenue", in the November 30, 1929 Argosy, about a device that can bring artificial darkness to an area, was originally intended for the detective pulps.

Other genres
Argosy 's Western fiction included Zane Grey's Last of the Duanes, which appeared in the September 1914 Argosy, and Walt Coburn's first story, "The Peace Treaty of the Seven Up", in the July 8, 1922 issue. Max Brand, a very prolific Western writer, sold his first pulp stories to All-Story in 1917, but by the end of the year had begun selling to Argosy too. Clarence Mulford was the creator of the character Hopalong Cassidy; the first few stories in the series appeared in other magazines, but many were published in Argosy in the early 1920s. Robert E. Howard, best known for his stories about Conan the Barbarian, also wrote Westerns, several of which were published in Argosy in the mid-1930s.

O. Henry appeared in the March 1904 Argosy with "Witches Loaves". H. Bedford-Jones, a popular author with over 1,000 stories published in the pulps over his career, sold his first story, "Out of a Stormy Sky", to The Argosy in 1910, and appeared in its pages regularly for the next four decades. Bedford-Jones's series about adventurer John Solomon began with The Gate of Farewell, serialized in the January and February 1914 issues, and continued in The Argosy and elsewhere for over twenty years. George Worts published the first of his "Peter the Brazen" series, about an "expert wireless operator and dauntless adventurer", in Argosy in the October 5, 1918 issue; it became one of the most popular series in the magazine, with all twenty stories appearing in Argosy into the mid-1930s. Under his own name and a pseudonym, Loring Brent, Worts contributed scores of other stories to Argosy over the same period. Johnston McCulley had launched his Zorro series in All-Story in 1919 and more episodes appeared in Argosy after the two magazines merged.

Fred MacIsaac, one of Argosy 's most popular authors, first appeared in the November 1, 1924 issue with the first installment of his novel Nothing but Money. Most of MacIsaac's work was not science fiction; an exception was The Hothouse World, a serial that ran in Argosy from February 21 to March 28, 1931. Theodore Roscoe was a frequent contributor of adventure stories set in exotic locations such as Timbuktu and Saigon. He traveled the world once his writing began to pay him well enough to allow him to do so, and used the experience to add color to his stories. Borden Chase sold his first story, "Tunnel Men", to Argosy in 1934 while he was a laborer on the tunnel being built under the East River in New York. He became a regular contributor, and his "East River", which appeared in Argosy in December 1934, was filmed the following year as Under Pressure. Ship of the Line, an early novel in C. S. Forester's stories about Horatio Hornblower, was serialized in Argosy in early 1938. Max Brand, though best known for his Westerns, wrote in many other genres as well, including historical fiction and mystery stories. He was the creator of Dr. Kildare, and four novels in the series appeared in Argosy between 1938 and 1940. Mystery contributors included Cornell Woolrich, beginning with "Hot Water" in the December 28, 1935 issue, and Norbert Davis.

Art
In 1903 Street & Smith launched The Popular Magazine, an early pulp rival to The Argosy with color art on the cover. Up to this point The Argosy had had text only on the cover, and no art, but in 1905, probably in response to The Popular Magazine, it began to run limited color art on the cover, and in 1912 it began to use full-color cover art. At the start of the 1920s the most frequent cover artists for Argosy were Modest Stein, Stockton Mulford, and P. J Monahan; by the end of the decade Paul Stahr and Robert Graef had taken over most of the covers, and remained the main cover artists until the mid-1930s. Hulse considers the artwork of this era to have been "consistently good". Towards the end of the 1930s Rudolph Belarski, Emmett Watson, and George Rozen become regular cover artists.

Virgil Finlay was a popular illustrator for the Munsey magazines at the end of the 1930s and start of the 1940s. When Argosy planned to reprint Seven Footprints to Satan, one of A. Merritt's novels, in 1939, Merritt persuaded the editor, G. W. Post, to use Finlay as the interior illustrator.

Transition from pulp format
In 1942, in an attempt to revive the magazine's fortunes, the all-fiction format was abandoned and articles about World War II and "sensationalized" news stories were added. The cover was redesigned starting with the March 7, 1942, issue, with the outline of a jet plane replacing the galleon behind the title, and a picture of the film star Dorothy Lamour on the cover instead of the usual adventure-themed cover art. The title was changed to The New Argosy, though this change was reversed with the August issue. The publication frequency was changed to monthly starting in May.

The new version of Argosy was almost immediately caught in a crackdown by Frank Walker, the Postmaster General. The Post Office declared that publishers should consider "decency and good morals" in deciding what could be included in a mailed magazine, and promptly notified dozens of publishers that they had to attend a hearing in Washington or lose their permits. Argosy 's citation from the Post Office listed stories considered to be obscene; the list included The G-String Murders, a serial by Rose Louise Hovick (better known as the burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee) that began in May 1942, and "How Paris Apaches Terrorize Nazis in Girl Orgies" and "Sex Outrages by Jap Soldiers", articles in the July and August 1942 issues. The hearings were thought by most publishers to be pointless, and nobody from Munsey attended. Argosy briefly lost its permit as a result, but did not miss any issues.

When Popular Publications acquired Argosy at the end of 1942, they announced that it would immediately return to a fiction-only format. Richard Abbott, the editor of Writer's Digest, commented that Popular were "again making Argosy the fine old book it was", and that when they acquired Argosy it had "recently been degraded by wretched editing". In September1943, the format changed from pulp to slick, but Popular still planned to print only fiction. Rogers Terrill, the editor, announced that "we have stepped out of the pulp field entirely ... We felt there was room in the country for an all-fiction slick, and we're it."

Slick men's magazine era
By the end of 1943, the policy had changed back to include feature articles again as well as fiction. This made Argosy a competitor with slick general men's magazines such as True. The publisher, Harry Steeger, later explained the reason for the change of focus, arguing that women had been the primary target for advertisers before World War II, but afterwards "new buying pursuits were adopted by the male and it began to be recognized by the advertising agencies that the male was an individual to be reckoned with in the purchase of all types of products ...". The non-fiction material was mostly written in-house; in 1950 Argosy rejected over 99% of the unsolicited non-fiction manuscripts it received.

After Argosy was acquired by Popular Publications, less science fiction appeared for a couple of years. Exceptions included some of Walter R. Brooks' Mr. Ed stories. The late 1940s saw more science fiction again, with stories by Nelson Bond, A. Bertram Chandler, and Robert A. Heinlein, whose "Gentlemen, Be Seated!" appeared in the May 1948 issue, and in the 1950s Argosy published work by Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip José Farmer. In 1977 one of Argosy 's special issues was devoted to science fiction; the stories in it were all reprinted from Popular's Super Science Stories, rather than from earlier issues of Argosy.

In September 1948 Erle Stanley Gardner began a true-crime column in Argosy called "The Court of Last Resort". Gardner enlisted assistance from professional experts to examine the cases of dozens of convicts who maintained their innocence after their appeals were exhausted. The column ran for ten years, ending in October 1958, and was adapted for television as a 26-episode series by NBC. Many of the convictions were eventually overturned.

Assessment
John Clute, discussing the American pulp magazines in the first two decades of the twentieth century, has described The Argosy and its companion The All-Story as "the most important pulps of their era." In the era before the Second World War, Argosy was regarded as one of the "Big Four" pulp magazines, along with Blue Book, Adventure and Short Stories.  In the early 1960s Theodore Peterson, a magazine historian, considered the slick incarnation of Argosy, along with True, to be "the best magazines of their kind". Peterson suggests that it was the success of these two magazines that led to the expansion of the men's magazine market during the 1950s.

Titles
Argosy 's title changed many times, either in an attempt to attract more readers, or because of mergers with other magazines.

Reprint magazines and anthologies
The long history of Argosy meant that by the 1930s there were many stories readers had heard of but could no longer obtain. In response to reader requests, Munsey launched Famous Fantastic Mysteries in 1939 to reprint old stories from both Argosy and All-Story Weekly. The following year Munsey launched Fantastic Novels, another reprint magazine, to make longer stories available without needing to serialize them in Famous Fantastic Mysteries. Fantastic Novels only lasted five issues before being discontinued in 1941, but Famous Fantastic Mysteries lasted for 81 issues, ceasing publication with the June 1953 issue. Popular brought back Fantastic Novels for another 20 issues between 1948 and 1951, and also produced five issues of A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, also as a reprint venue for stories from the old Munsey magazines, between 1949 and 1950.

In 1976 Popular published two anthology magazines of stories, mostly science fiction and fantasy, titled The Best of Argosy Annual, though only some of the stories included had originally appeared in Argosy. A collection of science fiction stories from the early years of The Argosy was edited by Gene Christie and published in 2010, titled The Space Annihilator and Other Early Science Fiction From the Argosy.

There was a Canadian reprint edition; the first and last known issues were dated April 21, 1924, and July 1960.

title: Argosy (magazine)


text:
Talk:History of antisemitism

Cut unrelated content
After Jesus' death, the New Testament portrays the Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem as hostile to Jesus' followers, and as occasionally using force against them. Drawing from the Jewish prophet Jeremiah, the New Testament teaches that with the death of Jesus a New Covenant was established which rendered obsolete, and in many respects superseded, the first covenant established by Moses. Observance of the earlier covenant traditionally characterizes Judaism. This New Testament teaching, and later variations to it, are part of what is called supersessionism. However, the early Jewish followers of Jesus continued to practice circumcision and observe dietary laws, which is why the failure to observe these laws by the first Gentile Christians became a matter of controversy and dispute some years after Jesus' death (ff; ). Stephen is executed by stoning. Before his conversion, Saul puts followers of Jesus in prison. After his conversion, Saul (Paul) is whipped at various times by Jewish authorities and is accused by Jewish authorities before the Roman courts. However, opposition by gentiles is also described, and more generally there are widespread references in the New Testament to the suffering experienced by Jesus' followers at the hands of others, particularly the Romans.

Egyptians
No mention of enslavement by ancient Egypt— big miss 2600:1700:4640:9DC0:BC4B:C90A:BFDB:CB9B (talk) 04:24, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

bias rule states: "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective"
Please do not delete reliable sources because of a false misunderstanding of the bias rule. The rule applies to editors not to sources. The bias rule states: "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective." see WP:BIASED Rjensen (talk) 19:21, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:History of antisemitism