# The Strand Magazine

**The Strand Magazine** was a monthly illustrated London magazine of short fiction and popular nonfiction that ran from January 1891 to March 1950, and it is now best known as the place where [Arthur Conan Doyle](https://www.edgepedia.org/arthur-conan-doyle)'s Sherlock Holmes stories first reached a mass readership.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup> The name has since been used twice more: an American quarterly of mystery and short fiction launched in 1998, and an independent student arts-and-culture magazine at [King's College London](https://www.edgepedia.org/kings-college-london) founded in 2017.<sup>[2](https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=strandmag)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[3](https://www.strandmagazine.co.uk/about/us)</sup>

| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original run | January 1891 to March 1950, published by George Newnes; sources count 710 or 711 monthly issues<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[4](https://www.threeisacollection.org/blampied/magazines/strand.html)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[5](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24335309M/The_Strand_Magazine_An_Illustrated_Monthly_Vol._I_January_to_June_1891)</sup> |
| Editorial leadership | Edited by Herbert Greenhough Smith from 1891 to 1930<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[6](https://mssp.byu.edu/journal/the-strand-magazine/index.html)</sup> |
| Price and pitch | Sold for sixpence, half the price of most monthlies, advertised as "a monthly magazine costing sixpence but worth a shilling"<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup> |
| Circulation | About half a million copies an issue at its height, driven by the Sherlock Holmes stories<sup>[7](https://cdn.penguin.co.uk/dam-assets/books/9780241434314/9780241434314-sample.pdf)</sup> |
| Sherlock Holmes | 56 Holmes short stories appeared from 1891 to 1927, most illustrated by Sidney Paget<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup> |
| American edition | Published from 1891 to 1916<sup>[2](https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=strandmag)</sup> |
| Revival | The name was revived in 1998 for an American magazine of mysteries and other short stories, still publishing today<sup>[2](https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=strandmag)</sup> |
| ISSN of the original | 2044-6187 (print, United Kingdom)<sup>[8](https://portal.issn.org/resource/issn/2044-6187)</sup> |

## The original magazine, 1891–1950

The Strand was founded by the publisher George Newnes and named after a fashionable London street. It aimed at a mass-market family readership with a mixture of factual articles, short stories, and serials, most of them illustrated. Newnes set out to place a picture on nearly every page despite the expense, at a time when photography and process engraving were still young, and this heavy illustration became one of the magazine's selling points.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[6](https://mssp.byu.edu/journal/the-strand-magazine/index.html)</sup> Its full title was *The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly*.<sup>[9](https://mail.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_periodical.php?jid=122)</sup>

**A household sixpenny monthly.** The formula established in the first volume held for decades: illustrated middle-brow short stories and non-fiction for adults, with a children's story, often a translated fairy tale, at the end of each issue.<sup>[10](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Strand_Magazine/1891)</sup> One contemporary observer of the magazine characterized its offer to readers as "cheap, healthful literature", spanning short and serialized stories, articles on factual topics, human-interest pieces, and celebrity material from among the era's most prominent authors, while the critic Reginald Pound deemed it a "national institution".<sup>[11](https://cove.navsa.org/2017/09/17/cfp-special-issue-of-victorian-periodicals-review-the-strand-magazine-1212017/)</sup> Modelled on American fiction magazines such as the *Saturday Evening Post*, it quickly became a perennial best-seller and paid lavishly for stories that met its editorial requirements.<sup>[12](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/short-story-and-the-first-world-war/war-in-the-magazines/2CC6AC38454F67F9DBB86ACDE11F7877)</sup>

## Sherlock Holmes and the contributors

The magazine's fortunes and Arthur Conan Doyle's rose together. When the first [Sherlock Holmes](https://www.edgepedia.org/sherlock-holmes) short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia", appeared in the July 1891 issue, circulation rose immediately; within two years the combination had made Conan Doyle one of the most popular authors of the age.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[13](https://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/history_strand2.html)</sup> In his 1924 autobiography Doyle explained the design behind it: a single character running through a series of stories would bind readers to a particular magazine, and Sherlock Holmes, whom he had already used in two short novels, would lend himself to a succession of stories.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup>

Fifty-six Holmes stories appeared in the Strand between 1891 and 1927, many illustrated by [Sidney Paget](https://www.edgepedia.org/sidney-paget)'s now famous drawings, and the magazine was home to the series for 26 years, from the first story in the *Adventures* to the last in *The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes*.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[14](https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/sherlock-holmes/adventures-memoirs)</sup> From mid-1891 until Conan Doyle's death in 1930 there was scarcely an issue without at least one of his stories or articles.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup> The magazine's literary editor, Herbert Greenhough Smith, encouraged Doyle toward series fiction with a continuing central figure, and in 1892 Doyle was paid £1,000 for twelve stories of 8,660 words each in a third Holmes series.<sup>[15](https://support.bl.uk/Files/f37e5273-661c-4726-8ec4-a69d00b202b7/8365-Friends-Newsletter-Autumn-2016-v7.pdf)</sup> The serialisation of *The Hound of the Baskervilles* in 1901–1902 was estimated to have added 30,000 to circulation, with Conan Doyle paid £480 to £620 per episode.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup> So rapturously were the Holmes stories received that they established both the Strand's reputation and the demand for character-driven short-story series.<sup>[16](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/strand_magazine_the)</sup>

**A roster of leading writers.** Doyle was far from alone. Across its sixty years the magazine published [Graham Greene](https://www.edgepedia.org/graham-greene), Agatha Christie, Rudyard Kipling, G. K. Chesterton, [Leo Tolstoy](https://www.edgepedia.org/leo-tolstoy), Georges Simenon, P. G. Wodehouse, [H. G. Wells](https://www.edgepedia.org/h-g-wells), W. Somerset Maugham, and W. W. Jacobs, and it carried new detective fiction from Christie, Margery Allingham, E. C. Bentley, Edgar Wallace, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Simenon.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup> Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill both contributed at different times; a sketch the Queen had drawn of one of her children appeared with her permission.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup>

## Closure in 1950

Wartime hardship broke the magazine's economics. Paper rationing forced the size down, costs rose, circulation fell, and the magazine never recovered. By 1950 it needed £250,000 to be put back on its feet; the owners saw no hope of raising the money, and in March 1950 publication stopped.<sup>[1](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)</sup> The Modernist Short Story Project's account attributes the abandonment to financial difficulties brought on by war and depression.<sup>[6](https://mssp.byu.edu/journal/the-strand-magazine/index.html)</sup> Sources differ on the total issue count: one count gives 710 monthly issues from January 1891 to March 1950,<sup>[4](https://www.threeisacollection.org/blampied/magazines/strand.html)</sup> while the [Open Library](https://www.edgepedia.org/open-library) record for Volume 1 gives 711 issues ending in March 1950.<sup>[5](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24335309M/The_Strand_Magazine_An_Illustrated_Monthly_Vol._I_January_to_June_1891)</sup>

Complete runs survive in digital archives: HathiTrust holds volumes 1–75 and 77–80 in page-image form for 1891–1930, the [Internet Archive](https://www.edgepedia.org/internet-archive) holds downloadable versions of the first 64 volumes, and the ISSN record lists the George Newnes years 1891–1907 as preserved.<sup>[2](https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=strandmag)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[8](https://portal.issn.org/resource/issn/2044-6187)</sup>

## The 1998 American revival

In 1998 the name was revived in the United States for a quarterly dedicated to mysteries, short stories, essays, and poetry, launched in the fall of that year and edited by Andrew F. Gulli.<sup>[2](https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=strandmag)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[17](https://www.dfw-sherlock.org/uploads/3/7/3/8/37380505/scuttlebutt_from_the_spermaceti_press_--_compilation_--_volume_1_--_1985_-_2010.pdf)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[18](https://wilkiecollinssociety.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/1981-2018-WCS-NEWSLETTERS.pdf)</sup> Fiction from Henry Slesar, Michael Gilbert, and H. R. F. Keating appeared in the magazine's early numbers, along with Matthew Prichard's pieces about his grandmother [Agatha Christie](https://www.edgepedia.org/agatha-christie) and Barbara and Christopher Roden's pieces about Conan Doyle; in 2000 a four-issue subscription was priced at $24.95 for the United States and Canada.<sup>[17](https://www.dfw-sherlock.org/uploads/3/7/3/8/37380505/scuttlebutt_from_the_spermaceti_press_--_compilation_--_volume_1_--_1985_-_2010.pdf)</sup>

**A home for lost works.** The revived Strand has made a specialty of publishing previously unknown or little-seen pieces by major writers, a run documented on its news page: a [F. Scott Fitzgerald](https://www.edgepedia.org/f-scott-fitzgerald) story (2015), a [William Faulkner](https://www.edgepedia.org/william-faulkner) play (2015), an H. G. Wells ghost story (2016), a [James Thurber](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-thurber) story and a J. M. Barrie play (2016), a Raymond Chandler story (2017), an Ernest Hemingway war story (2018), a Steinbeck story (2019), Louisa May Alcott material (2020), Shirley Jackson stories (2022), a lost James M. Cain story (2023), a Truman Capote story found in a notebook (2023), a lost Chesterton essay on detective fiction (2024), unpublished Ian Fleming and Graham Greene stories (2025), and Tennessee Williams's radio play "The Strangers" (2025).<sup>[19](https://strandmag.com/whats-new/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[20](https://apnews.com/article/10602e127639516bb0ffbc72661f5ae4)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[21](https://apnews.com/article/843ebcec04e8816764e2ff428afff371)</sup> In January 2023 the magazine won the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America.<sup>[19](https://strandmag.com/whats-new/)</sup>

## The London student magazine of the same name

A third publication uses the name independently. *Strand Magazine* is a student-run and student-read arts and culture magazine in central London, founded by Samuel Antonio Turner in January 2017 and explicitly a homage to the original 1891–1950 magazine. It accepts pitches only from students, staff members, or alumni of King's College London, is an IPSO-compliant publication under the Editor's Code of Practice, and operates from the King's College London students' union offices at Bush House on the Strand.<sup>[3](https://www.strandmagazine.co.uk/about/us)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[22](https://www.strandmagazine.co.uk/contact)</sup> It has won multiple Student Publication Association awards: at the 2024 SPA National Awards it won Best Specialist Publication and was shortlisted for Best Publication, Best Website, and other categories.<sup>[3](https://www.strandmagazine.co.uk/about/us)</sup>

## In scholarship

The Strand has drawn renewed academic attention, much of it centered on the Holmes connection. A 2019 special section of *Victorian Periodicals Review*, "Reassessing the Strand Magazine, 1891–1918", noted that despite the magazine's popularity it had attracted limited scholarly attention and was often dismissed as a prime example of the Victorian middlebrow.<sup>[11](https://cove.navsa.org/2017/09/17/cfp-special-issue-of-victorian-periodicals-review-the-strand-magazine-1212017/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[23](https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/21569/)</sup> Jonathan L. Cranfield, a scholar then at the [University of Kent](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-kent), has argued in *Textual Practice* that the late-Victorian periodical is a quintessentially environmental form, bound closely to its surroundings, and has examined the Strand's connection with intra-city rail services, the growth of the commuter belt, and inner-city slums.<sup>[24](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950236X.2013.848926)</sup> Will Tattersdill's *Science, Fiction, and the Fin-de-Siècle Periodical Press* ([Cambridge University Press](https://www.edgepedia.org/cambridge-university-press), 2016) treats the Strand and its imitators, including *The Windsor Magazine*, *The Idler*, and *Pearson's Magazine*, as the setting in which science fiction emerged as a distinct genre.<sup>[25](https://academic.oup.com/res/article-abstract/68/284/394/2567057)</sup>

## References

1. [Chris Willis, "The Story of the Strand", Strand Magazine (US), first published December 1998, reprinted on the magazine's history page](https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/history-of-the-strand/)
2. [The Strand Magazine archives, The Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania](https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=strandmag)
3. [About, STRAND Magazine (London student publication)](https://www.strandmagazine.co.uk/about/us)
4. [The Strand Magazine, Blampied collection listing, threeisacollection.org](https://www.threeisacollection.org/blampied/magazines/strand.html)
5. [The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, Vol. I, Open Library record](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24335309M/The_Strand_Magazine_An_Illustrated_Monthly_Vol._I_January_to_June_1891)
6. [The Strand Magazine, Modernist Short Story Project, Brigham Young University](https://mssp.byu.edu/journal/the-strand-magazine/index.html)
7. [Introduction to a Penguin Classics Sherlock Holmes edition, sample PDF](https://cdn.penguin.co.uk/dam-assets/books/9780241434314/9780241434314-sample.pdf)
8. [ISSN record 2044-6187, The Strand magazine, ISSN Portal](https://portal.issn.org/resource/issn/2044-6187)
9. [Periodical: Strand Magazine, ATCL, Victorian Research Web](https://mail.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_periodical.php?jid=122)
10. [The Strand Magazine/1891, Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Strand_Magazine/1891)
11. [CFP: Special issue of Victorian Periodicals Review: The Strand Magazine, COVE, NAVSA](https://cove.navsa.org/2017/09/17/cfp-special-issue-of-victorian-periodicals-review-the-strand-magazine-1212017/)
12. [The War in the Magazines, in *The Short Story and the First World War*, Cambridge University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/short-story-and-the-first-world-war/war-in-the-magazines/2CC6AC38454F67F9DBB86ACDE11F7877)
13. [Discovering Sherlock Holmes, Stanford University](https://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/history_strand2.html)
14. [Adventures & Memoirs, Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects, Grolier Club](https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/sherlock-holmes/adventures-memoirs)
15. [My British Library, Friends newsletter, Autumn 2016, British Library](https://support.bl.uk/Files/f37e5273-661c-4726-8ec4-a69d00b202b7/8365-Friends-Newsletter-Autumn-2016-v7.pdf)
16. [Strand Magazine, The, Science Fiction Encyclopedia](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/strand_magazine_the)
17. [Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press (April 2000 item on the revived Strand), compiled newsletter PDF](https://www.dfw-sherlock.org/uploads/3/7/3/8/37380505/scuttlebutt_from_the_spermaceti_press_--_compilation_--_volume_1_--_1985_-_2010.pdf)
18. [The Strand Magazine, Wilkie Collins Society newsletters 1981–2018](https://wilkiecollinssociety.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/1981-2018-WCS-NEWSLETTERS.pdf)
19. [What's New, Strand Magazine (US)](https://strandmag.com/whats-new/)
20. [Haunted house and invisible demons: Tennessee Williams' early radio play 'The Strangers' publishes, Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/10602e127639516bb0ffbc72661f5ae4)
21. [Rare G.K. Chesterton essay on mystery writing is itself a mystery, Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/843ebcec04e8816764e2ff428afff371)
22. [Contact, STRAND Magazine (London student publication)](https://www.strandmagazine.co.uk/contact)
23. [Vuohelainen, M. & Liggins, E. (2019). Introduction: Reassessing the Strand Magazine, 1891–1918. Victorian Periodicals Review 52(2), City Research Online](https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/21569/)
24. [Jonathan L. Cranfield, Sherlock's slums: the periodical as an environmental form, Textual Practice 28(2)](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950236X.2013.848926)
25. [Review of Will Tattersdill, Science, Fiction, and the Fin-de-Siècle Periodical Press, The Review of English Studies 68(284)](https://academic.oup.com/res/article-abstract/68/284/394/2567057)

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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Creative written works and worlds › Prose fiction › Novellas, novelettes, and short stories › Short story collections › Genre short story collections*

*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*

*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*

License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license