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landmarks
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overview
This profile considers US publisher Frank Munsey and the
Munsey Company.
It covers -
introduction
Frank A Munsey & Co was founded by Frank Andrew Munsey
(1854-1925), responsible for Munsey's Magazine,
which at its peak had the largest circulation of any magazine
in the world. He used revenue from magazine publishing
to expand into grocery retailing, into a small chain of
US newspapers, banks and trust companies (eg Munsey Trust
Co), the Mohican hotel, an umbrella factory and into financial
speculation. The latter was assisted by boosting share
prices, notably in US Steel (of which he became a director),
through his publications.
Munsey is now best known as a supporter of Teddy Roosevelt,
as a publisher of pulp magazines (cheap, mass produced
and aimed down market) and for his recurrent acquisition
and consolidation or closure of newspapers. He has been
compared to Dean Singleton. Hearst
editor Arthur Brisbane quipped
Owners
of little newspapers rub their eyes, stand at gaze,
and ask, "Where does dear, kind Mr. Munsey get
all the money he pays us?"
Hearst
himself reportedly envied Munsey's real estate spending,
ordering Karl von Wiegand to "get me a castle"
after hearing that Munsey had bought a German castle.
(Hearst settled for St Donats, a monstrosity in the UK,
in 1925).
William
Allen White's tart eulogy reported that
Frank Munsey, the great publisher, is dead.
Frank Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day
the talent of a meat packer, the morals of a money changer
and the manners of an undertaker. He and his kind have
about succeeded in transforming a once noble profession
into an 8% security.
The
Dictionary of American Biography more sedately
commented that
He
was not a reformer, nor an idealist, nor was he deeply
interested in any causes. His passion was to found or
purchase magazines and, later, newspapers. If one of
his magazines failed to earn well he killed it and began
another; if public taste passed from one of his productions
he dropped it to develop another.
Munsey's
remaining newspaper, magazine, book publishing, retail
and other holdings were sold after his death, with substantial
bequests to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (US$17,305,594)
and other bodies. The magazine arm, rebadged as The Munsey
Company, was acquired by Popular Publications Inc - a
fellow pulp fiction specialist - in 1942. The retail interests
became Mohican Stores, Inc.
imprints
Munsey imprints include -
Newspapers
-
- Washington
Times (1901)
- New
York Daily News (1901-1904)
-
Boston Journal (1902)
-
Baltimore News (-1923)
-
Philadelphia Evening Times (-1914)
-
New York Herald (1920-1924)
-
Paris Herald (1920-1924)
-
New York Evening Telegram (1920-1924)
- New
York Sun (merged with Herald 1920)
-
New York Press (merged with Herald
1916)
-
New York Mail
- New
York Star
- New
York Daily Continent (rebadged Star)
- New
York Globe (1924-25)
Magazines
included -
-
Munsey's Magazine (later Argosy Magazine)
- Golden
Argosy
- Railroad
Man's Magazine
- Puritan
Magazine (absorbed by Junior Munsey)
-
Junior Munsey
- The
Quaker (absorbed by Junior Munsey)
- Munsey's
Illustrated Weekly
- The
Ocean
- The
Live Wire
- The
Cavalier
- All-Story
Magazine
-
The Scrap Book
-
Cavalier
- Double
Detective
- Railroad
- Current
Mechanics.
studies
There is no major recent study of Munsey. The major biography
remains George Britt's Forty Years, Forty Millions:
The Career of Frank A. Munsey (New York: Farrar &
Rinehart 1935), an account by an associate.
For the News see Tell it to Sweeney: The
Informal History of the New York Daily News (Garden
City: Doubleday 1961) by JA Chapman. Pointers to works
on the Herald feature here.
He authored several novels in the style of Horatio Alger:
Afloat in a Great City (1887), The Boy Broker;
or, Among the Kings of Wall Street (New York: Frank
A. Munsey & Co 1888), A Tragedy of Errors
(New York: Frank A. Munsey & Co 1889), Under
Fire: A Tale of New England Village Life (New York: Frank
A. Munsey & Co 1890) and Derringforth (New
York: Frank A. Munsey & Co 1894)
 next
page (Munsey landmarks)
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