Vintage Magazine Stars: Jack the Ripper Sherlock Holmes

The key to selling Vintage Magazines (1830- 1940) is research. The trick is to find the collectible Stars and Sleepers and where they were published . First appearances of great authors are in magazines alongside the great illustrators of the past. Many writing Stars were also editors and publishers. Charles Dickens wrote and published Household Words with writer/editor Wilkie Collins in the 1850s. Edgar Allan Poes first appearance in a national magazine was in Godeys Ladys Book. Poe was also an editor of Grahams Magazine where his first American Detective story The Murders In The Rue Morgue was published in 1841. His most famous poem, The Raven, was published under the pseudonym of Quarles in The American Review A Whig Journal in 1845. Arguably, the worlds most popular detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, made his first appearance in Beetons Christmas Annual of 1887 in Arthur Conan Doyles "A Study In Scarlet." However, it was the publication of A Scandal in Bohemia in The Strand Magazine in 1891 that made Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes household names. When Doyle killed off Holmes in The Final Problem, the Strand and Doyle were besieged with upset and outraged readers. Doyle was forced to create the Return of Sherlock Holmes in The Empty House and the rest is literary history. The 1888 version of a media event was the serial killer, Jack the Ripper, who murdered an unknown number of prostitutes in Londons poverty-stricken East End. In addition to the various newspaper reports, the humor magazine , Punch, Or the London Chiavari satirized the Ripper murders making the Ripper a magazine Star. At the turn of the century American magazines-- especially the Hearst owned Cosmopolitan not only attracted Star authors such as Jack London and Ambrose Bierce, but also featured important illustrators on their covers. Artists such as Harrison Fisher ( a Sleeper) illustrated Hearst Magazine covers exclusively through the early 1930s until his death. The Fisher Girls rivaled the Gibson Girls created by Star artist Charles Dana Gibson. Gibson became the editor and publisher of the original Life humor magazine after World War I. While Art Stars such as Maxfield Parrish and John Held, Jr. illustrated Lifes covers, a little known artist, T.S. Sullivant (a Sleeper) was drawing the cartoons. Sullivants cartoons of animals and cave people have been inspiring the animation artists of Disney and Warner since "Fantasia". A third area magazine collectors cultivate is advertising. Magazine pros call these people Rippers- after Jack. These are the people who cull Vintage magazines for Cream of Wheat, Coca Cola, Packard, Ford, and Ivory Soap ads for artists such as Joseph Clement Coll (a Sleeper), Jessie Willcox Smith (a Star) , Coles Phillips (a Sleeper), Maxfield Parrish ( a Star). Ad collectors are as stringent and exacting as author and illustrator collectors. If one page is missing from a magazine, it is returned, regardless, of the fact that it has their coveted ad on that page. A wonderful and possibly lucrative opportunity exists for Vintage magazine Star and Sleeper searching, if you are willing to work hard at it and do the research.About Me copyright 2005 by Elaine Gross Russell, Sangraal Inc.