A popular men's magazine published in the United States from 1888 until 1979, Argosy was the first of the "pulp" magazines (see entry under 1930s—Print Culture in volume 2), so called because of the cheap, rough paper on which they were printed. It was also the first adult magazine to rely almost exclusively on fiction for its content, usually adventure, detective, science fiction, or western stories that were thought to appeal to a male readership.

Argosy traced its roots to Golden Argosy: Freighted with Treasures for Boys and Girls, a magazine created by Frank Munsey (1854–1925) in 1882 to appeal to young people. By 1886, Munsey was publishing adult stories in the magazine, whose name he changed to Argosy two years later. In 1896, he shifted to pulp paper and began publishing serial fiction (stories that were "serialized," or broken into sections across several issues) exclusively, with an emphasis on action, adventure, and mystery...