See also: Black Mask

Black Mask was a pulp magazine launched in 1920 by the journalist H.L. Mencken and by the literary critic George Jean Nathan. It was launched at the origin to reinflate the prestigious one but overdrawn literary magazine The Smart Set. Under their leading direction, Black Mask was not exclusively police a literature publication, but wanted to publish the best stories of adventure possible, the best stories of mysteries and detectives, the best lovesongs, the best stories of love and the best stories of occultism .

After the exit of the first eight numbers, Mencken and Nathan considered that the initial investment of 500 dollars had sufficiently been amortized, they then sold the magazine to their editors Eltinge Warner and Eugene Crow for 12.500 dollars. Joseph Shaw then took in hand the drafting of the publication.

Shaw, owner of seam discovered in one of the first numbers, changed the leading line immediately, transforming it into favorite outlet for the writers of detective novels naturalist whose school was being born and whose leader was Carroll John Daly. The private detective of Daly named Race William was a right and rough hero with the well hung language and which was going to become the model for many other detectives.

Black Mask is then completely devoted to the Detective novel and the hardboiled in particular. Very many authors begin their career while publishing in his pages, like Dashiell Hammett, the creator of Sam Spade and the Continental COp, or Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner. The success of the magazine grows then and is used as launching pad with a whole generation of authors. Business success and critical is with go.

Black Mask is with its apogee commercial at the beginning of the Années 1930. At this time there he is confronted with a certain erosion of his assistantship, now tried by the blossoming of Comics and finding his heroes (and its authors favorite) in the new media which are the radio and the cinema. In 1936, refusing to transfer certain authors already maigrement paid, Shaw resigns, and much of the authors among most famous and most talented give up the magazine with him. As from this moment there, Black Mask did nothing but decline until ceasing its publication in 1951.

Anecdote

It seems that Black Mask is the pulp magazine which inspired Quentin Tarantino in 1994 for its film Pulp Fiction . Its title of origin would have been Black Mask before being definitively changed.

External bonds and references

• BlackMaskMagazine.com

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