The Wide World

If you recall, last week I took a brief look at a 1918 edition of the long-lived British men's magazine Wide World.   Well, one thing led to another and I ended up buying a job lot of twenty three issues very cheaply on eBay.  These comprise of all but the January issue for 1962 and a complete run of all twelve issues from 1964.  With the magazine ceasing publication in the autumn of 1965, these represent some of the very last issues of Wide World. Above is a selection of the 1962 covers, which show it to be, in this period, a reasonable facsimile of the US equivalent, but with the covers showing slightly greater restraint than than their transatlantic cousins, with the emphasis firmly upon male adventure rather than sex and violence.  Below is another selection of covers, which include three from 1962, the remainder from 1964:

As can be seen, the cover style continues into sixty four, but with emphasis switching from being action orientated to more sober character portraits 'ripped from the headlines' to illustrate the featured stories.  Toward the end of 1964, though, the cover style changes radically, with a new mast head design and a switch to photographs rather than paintings, in a clear attempt to make the magazine seem more contemporary.  This style continued into 1965 although, from the examples I've seen, the cover illustrations started tending toward the abstract.   

So, I'm looking forward to working my way through this lot - even a brief perusal has hinted at plenty of pulp-style bizarreness within these covers.  While American men's pulps can be difficult to obtain in the UK, (I have a few, but apart from special UK editions, they tended not to be sold here, meaning that few second hand copies have survived and remain available), their domestic equivalents can be obtained for surprisingly reasonable prices on the likes of eBay, (not to mention second hand bookshops and charity shops).  Especially if you buy them in job lots, as I did here.  Anyway, these are going to provide me with entertainment (and hopefully material for posts here) for weeks to come.