The Children’s Hour was a monthly magazine edited by Timothy Shay Arthur. Arthur was a fervently industrious writer in the middle of the 19th century, turning out dozens of novels preaching morality and temperance, as well as publishing some 14 magazines. He’s best remembered today for his novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What […]

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The game box was a simple publishing conceit: several simple board games were packed into one box, with the requisite markers, dice, and spinner. Often the boards were the familiar ones for checkers, backgammon, mill, and other favorites; sometimes they were new ones. This 1956 set from Saalfield contains ten original games, printed on five […]

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Pluck and Luck was the most persistent of the “dime novels,” racking up 1605 issues between 1898 and 1929. I put “dime novel” in quotes, since it’s somewhat of a misnomer; as you can see, this issue cost a nickel. It was published by Frank Tousey, a  New York publisher responsible for a number of […]

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Hugo Gernsback was one of the pioneers of publishing, producing one of the first science fiction magazines, Amazing Stories, and many publications devoted to radio and electronics. Along the way, he also published pulp magazines (Pirate Stories), comics (Superworld), and, of course, the controversial but probably informative digest Sexology. He was also known for his […]

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Bottoms Up billed itself as “The Paper for People Who Drink… and Eat” and “Long Island’s Favorite Tavern Weekly.” It was edited by Ted Kay, of Roosevelt, NY; I haven’t been able to find out more about him. The issues I’ve seen are from 1957, and run 8 or 10 pages. They consist mostly of […]

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And here follow the last four pages of Calligraphs, a small hand-lettered poetry magazine published by Anton Romatka in 1935. The last two pages advertise Romatka’s services as publisher, editor, teacher, and calligrapher. Googling reveals little about Max Berman or Gussie Perlman, but turned up the interesting fact that Harvey W. Flink contributed his poems […]

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We continue our examination of Anton Romatka, who led a curious bohemian existence providing poetry, writing workshops, and calligraphy in Greenwich Village in the ’30s and ’40s. Here are the next four pages of his hand-lettered magazine Calligraphs, from 1935. They include one poem by Romatka, and an acrostic on his name by Richard Zeydel. A […]

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I found this stack of booklets recently; the first seven were published by the Trail Blazers’ Publishing Co., and the last two by W. H. Harper. I assume the two companies were the same. All are from 1943. I found very little about them online, except that there was also a “Trail Blazers Almanac” for […]

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Yoyo, or, to give it its full title, Tales n’ Tails for the One n’ Every Yoyo, was published in January, 1972, in NYC. It advertised subscriptions, but this seems to have been the only issue, cheerily numbered 00. It was published and edited by the painter and cartoonist Gerard Millan Perichon, who usually drew […]

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Hello Buddy was a small magazine (4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″, 32 pp.) intended to be sold by disabled veterans during World War 2. It contained jokes, poems, and cartoons, mostly on military subjects; it was published by Service Men’s Magazine in NYC, and subtitled “Comics of War, Facts of Service.” This copy is undated, […]

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