Frequency Monthly Final issue
— Number March 1950
711 Country UK | First issue January 1891 Company George Newnes Ltd Language English | |
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The Strand Magazine was a monthly magazine founded by George Newnes, composed of short fiction and general interest articles. It was published in the United Kingdom from January 1891 to March 1950, running to 711 issues, though the first issue was on sale well before Christmas 1890. Its immediate popularity is evidenced by an initial sale of nearly 300,000. Sales increased in the early months, before settling down to a circulation of almost 500,000 copies a month which lasted well into the 1930s. It was edited by Herbert Greenhough Smith from 1891 to 1930. The magazine's original offices were in Burleigh Street off The Strand, London. It was revived in 1998 as a quarterly magazine.
Contents
It was normally bound as six-monthly volumes, from January to June and July to December, but from the mid-1930s this varied, and the final volumes in the late 1940s ran from October to March and April to September, the final volume CXVIII (118) running from October 1949 to March 1950.
Fiction
The Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle were first published in The Strand with illustrations by Sidney Paget. With the serialisation of Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, sales reached their peak. Readers lined up outside the magazine's offices, waiting to get the next instalment. E. W. Hornung's stories about A. J. Raffles, the "gentleman thief", first appeared in The Strand in the 1890s. Other contributors included Grant Allen, Margery Allingham, J. E. Preston Muddock, H. G. Wells, E. C. Bentley, Agatha Christie, Mary Angela Dickens, C. B. Fry, Walter Goodman, E. Nesbit, W. W. Jacobs, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Morrison, Dorothy L. Sayers, Georges Simenon, Edgar Wallace, Max Beerbohm, P. G. Wodehouse, Dornford Yates and Winston Churchill. Once a sketch drawn by Queen Victoria of one of her children appeared with her permission.
Puzzles
In addition to the many fiction pieces and illustrations, The Strand was also known for some time as the source of ground-breaking brain teasers, under a column called "Perplexities", first written by Henry Dudeney. Dudeney introduced many new concepts to the puzzle world, including the first known crossnumber puzzle, in 1926. In that same year, Dudeney produced an article, "The Psychology of Puzzle Crazes", reflecting and analysing the demand for such works. He edited Perplexities from 1910 until he died in 1930. G.H. Savage became the column's editor, soon to be joined by William Thomas Williams (as W.T. Williams), who in 1935 authored the best-known cross-figure puzzle of today. The puzzle goes by many names, the original being "The Little Pigley Farm". It has also been known as "Dog's Mead", "Little Pigley", "Little Piggly Farm", "Little Pigsby", "Pilgrims’ Plot", and "Dog Days".
Cover
The magazine's iconic cover, an illustration looking eastwards down London's Strand towards St Mary-le-Strand, with the title suspended on telegraph wires, was the work of Victorian artist and designer George Charles Haité. The initial cover featured a corner plaque showing the name of Burleigh Street, home to the magazine's original offices. The lettering on the plaque in Haité's design was later changed when Newnes moved to the adjacent address of Southampton Street. A variation of the same design was featured on the cover of a sister title, The Strand Musical Magazine.
Final days
The magazine format changed to the smaller digest size in October 1941. The Strand Magazine ceased publication in March 1950, forced out of the market by declining circulation and rising costs. Its last editor was Macdonald Hastings, distinguished war correspondent and later TV reporter and contributor to the Eagle boys' comic.
United States edition
The magazine also published a United States edition from February 1891 through February 1916. In its early years, the contents of the U.S. edition were identical with those of the U.K. edition, though usually with a one-month time lag. As the years went on there were some differences in the contents of the two editions, reflecting fiction for which The Strand did not hold the U.S. rights (such as The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which was commissioned by Collier's) and non-fiction that would not interest most U.S. readers (such as articles about personalities in the House of Commons). The circulation of the U.S. edition was minimal in the early 1890s but was reported at 150,000 by 1898. The U.S. edition was discontinued in 1916 due to logistical difficulties arising from World War I.
1998 revival
The Strand was brought back into publication in 1998 as a quarterly magazine, now based in Birmingham, Michigan. It has published fiction by many well-known writers including John Mortimer, Ray Bradbury, Alexander McCall Smith, Ruth Rendell, Colin Dexter, Edward Hoch, James Grippando, and Tennessee Williams.