The Strand Magazine was a monthly magazine composed of fictional stories and factual articles founded by George Newnes

George Newnes

Sir George Newnes, 1st Baronet was a publisher and editor in England.-Background and education:...

. It was first published in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 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

Herbert Greenhough Smith

Herbert Greenhough Smith was the first editor of The Strand Magazine which published many of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories...

 from 1891 to 1930.

Fiction

The Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

 short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

 were first published in The Strand with illustrations by Sidney Paget

Sidney Paget

Sidney Edward Paget was a British illustrator of the Victorian era, best known for his illustrations that accompanied Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand magazine.- Life :...

. With the serialization of Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an...

, sales reached their peak. Readers lined up outside the magazine's offices, waiting to get the next installment. The A. J. Raffles

A. J. Raffles

Arthur J. Raffles is a character created in the 1890s by E. W. Hornung, a brother-in-law to Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Raffles is, in many ways, a deliberate inversion of Holmes — he is a "gentleman thief," living in the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing...

, a "gentleman thief", stories of Ernest William Hornung

Ernest William Hornung

Ernest William Hornung , known as Willie, was an English author, most famous for writing the Raffles series of novels about a gentleman thief in late Victorian London....

 first appeared in The Strand in the 1890s. Other contributors included Grant Allen

Grant Allen

Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was a science writer, author and novelist, and a successful upholder of the theory of evolution.-Biography:...

, Margery Allingham

Margery Allingham

Margery Louise Allingham was an English crime writer, best remembered for her detective stories featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.- Childhood and schooling :...

, J. E. Preston Muddock, H.G. Wells, E.C. Bentley

Edmund Clerihew Bentley

E. C. Bentley was a popular English novelist and humorist of the early twentieth century, and the inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics...

, Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

, C.B. Fry, Walter Goodman

Walter Goodman

Walter Goodman was a British painter, illustrator and author.The son of British portrait painter Julia Salaman and London linen draper and town councillor, Louis Goodman , he studied with J. M. Leigh and at the Royal Academy in London, where he was admitted as a student in 1851...

, E. Nesbit

E. Nesbit

Edith Nesbit was an English author and poet whose children's works were published under the name of E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television...

, W.W. Jacobs, Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

, Arthur Morrison

Arthur Morrison

Arthur George Morrison was an English author and journalist known for his realistic novels about London's East End and for his detective stories....

, Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...

, Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.-Early life and education:...

, Edgar Wallace

Edgar Wallace

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals....

, Max Beerbohm

Max Beerbohm

Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...

, P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...

, Dornford Yates

Dornford Yates

Dornford Yates was the pseudonym of the British novelist, Cecil William Mercer , whose novels and short stories, some humorous , some thrillers , were best-sellers in the 21-year interwar period between the First and Second world wars.The pen name, Dornford Yates, first in print in 1910, resulted...

 and even Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

. Once a sketch drawn by Queen Victoria

Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....

 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

Henry Dudeney

Henry Ernest Dudeney was an English author and mathematician who specialised in logic puzzles and mathematical games. He is known as one of the country's foremost creators of puzzles...

. Dudeney introduced many new concepts to the puzzle world, including the first known crossnumber

Cross-figure

A cross-figure is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries which consist of numbers rather than words, with individual digits being entered in the blank cells...

 puzzle, in 1926. In that same year, Dudeney produced an article, "The Psychology of Puzzle Crazes," reflecting and analyzing 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

W. T. Williams

William Thomas Williams FAA OBE was an English and Australian botanist and plant taxonomist, known for his work on algorithms for numerical taxonomy.-Biography:...

 (as W.T. Williams), who, in 1935 authored the best-known cross-figure

Cross-figure

A cross-figure is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries which consist of numbers rather than words, with individual digits being entered in the blank cells...

 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

St Mary-le-Strand

St. Mary le Strand is a Church of England church at the eastern end of the Strand in the City of Westminster, London. It lies within the Deanery of Westminster within the Diocese of London. The church stands on what is now a traffic island to the north of Somerset House, King's College London's...

, with the title suspended on telegraph wires, was the work of Victorian artist and designer George Charles Haité

George Charles Haité

George Charles Haité was an English designer, painter, illustrator and writer. His most famous work is the iconic cover design of the Strand Magazine launched in 1891 which helped popularise the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle...

. 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

After a format change to a smaller "digest" size in October 1941, the Strand Magazine eventually ceased publication in March 1950, forced out of the market by a falling circulation and rising costs, its last editor being Macdonald Hastings

Macdonald Hastings

Douglas Edward Macdonald Hastings was a British journalist, author and war correspondent.Macdonald Hastings was born in London, and educated at Stonyhurst College, a Roman Catholic Jesuit school in Lancashire. He became war correspondent for Picture Post during the Second World War, sending...

, distinguished war correspondent

War correspondent

A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...

 and later TV reporter and contributor to the Eagle

Eagle (comic)

Eagle was a seminal British children's comic, first published from 1950 to 1969, and then in a relaunched format from 1982 to 1994. It was founded by Marcus Morris, an Anglican vicar from Lancashire. Morris edited a parish magazine called The Anvil, but felt that the church was not communicating...

boys' comic.

The Strand was brought back into publication in 1998 and has published fiction by several well-known writers including John Mortimer

John Mortimer

Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...

, Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...

, Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees...

, Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....

, Colin Dexter

Colin Dexter

Norman Colin Dexter, OBE, is an English crime writer, known for his Inspector Morse novels which were written between 1975 and 1999 and adapted as a television series from 1987 to 2000.-Early life and career:...

, and Edward Hoch.

Further reading

• Pound, Reginald, A Maypole in the Strand (Ernest Benn, 1948).
• Pound, Reginald, The Strand Magazine: 1891–1950 (Heinemann 1966).
• Beare, Geraldine, Index to The Strand Magazine, 1891–1950 (Greenwood Press, 1982).
• Ashley, Mike, The Age of the Storytellers (British Library, 2006).
• Pittard, Christopher, "Cheap, Healthful Literature": The Strand Magazine, Fictions of Crime, and Purified Reading Communities, Victorian Periodicals Review 40:1 (Spring 2007), pp. 1–23.

External links

• 1998 description of historic Strand Magazine by Chris Willis
• Chronology of Recreational Mathematics, by David Singmaster
• The Little Pigley Farm crossnumber puzzle and its history by Joel Pomerantz
• archive.org The first thirty issues of the Strand Magazine (together with some others).
• Mostly-Victorian.com Excerpts from the Strand Magazine (including the first Sherlock Holmes stories).