{{short description, American publisher of fiction periodicals
Mercury Publications (a.k.a. Mercury Press) was a magazine publishing company,initially owned and operated by Lawrence E. Spivak, which mainly published
genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre, in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
A num ...
in
digest-sized
Digest size is a magazine size, smaller than a conventional or "journal size" magazine but larger than a standard paperback book, approximately , but can also be and , similar to the size of a DVD case. These sizes have evolved from the printin ...
formats. The focus of Spivak's line was on detective and mystery stories and novels, but it also included magazines about humor, fantasy, and true crime. The offices were located at 570 Lexington Avenue in New York, N.Y. (in later years in
Cornwall, Connecticut
Cornwall is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 1,567 at the 2020 census.
History
The town of Cornwall, Connecticut, is named after the county of Cornwall, England. The town was incorporated in 1740, near ...
).
Spivak entered publishing in 1933 as the business manager of ''
The American Mercury
''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured wri ...
'', and two years later, he became the magazine's publisher, expanding his operations in the late 1930s with additional titles. His subsidiary companies included Mystery House and Fantasy House. Two Mercury series were Mercury Library and Mercury Books.
Other Mercury imprints and titles included:
*Bestseller Mystery Books (a.k.a. Bestseller Library)
*''Bestsellers'' magazine (beginning 1945), subtitled "Authorized Book Condensations"
*''The Book of Wit & Humor'', edited by
Louis Untermeyer
Louis Untermeyer (October 1, 1885 – December 18, 1977) was an American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. He was appointed the fourteenth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1961.
Life and career
Untermeyer was born in New Y ...
and
Charles Angoff
Charles Angoff (April 22, 1902 – May 3, 1979) was a managing editor of the American Mercury magazine as well as a professor of English of Fairleigh Dickinson University. H. L. Mencken called him "the best managing editor in America." He wa ...
*''
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'' is a bi-monthly American digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction, and mystery fiction. Launched in fall 1941 by Mercury Press, ''EQMM'' is named after the fict ...
'', edited by
Frederic Dannay
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve ...
*Jonathan Press Mystery Books
*''
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' (usually referred to as ''F&SF'') is a U.S. fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House, a subsidiary of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Press. Editors Anthony Boucher ...
'', initially edited by
Anthony Boucher
William Anthony Parker White (August 21, 1911 – April 29, 1968), better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher (), was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio d ...
and
J. Francis McComas
Jesse Francis McComas (June 9, 1911 – April 19, 1978) was an American science fiction editor. McComas wrote several stories on his own in the 1950s using both his own name and the pseudonym Webb Marlowe.
He entered publishing in 1941 as a sale ...
*''Mercury Mystery'' (a.k.a. ''Mercury Mystery Book Magazine'' and ''Mercury Mystery Magazine''), edited by Joseph W. Ferman
*''True Crime Detective'', edited by Edward D. Radin, and then by Boucher and McComas
Spivak launched his Bestseller Library series in 1938, with a new title each month. In 1940, he split the Bestseller Library into ''Mercury Mysteries'' and ''Bestseller Mysteries''. ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'' began in 1941, followed by the Jonathan Press Mysteries imprint in 1942. ''Mercury Mystery Book Magazine'' continued the long-run series of full-length and condensed mystery novels published in a digest-sized format, beginning with the title of ''Mercury Mystery'' in March 1940. Starting with #210, it ran for 23 issues before merging with ''Bestseller Mystery Magazine''. ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' began in 1949 under the title ''The Magazine of Fantasy''. In the fall of 1950, Spivak sold ''The American Mercury'' to millionaire investment banker Clendenin J. Ryan, and his editor was
William Bradford Huie
William Bradford Huie (November 13, 1910 – November 20, 1986) was an American writer, investigative reporter, editor, national lecturer, and television host. His credits include twenty-one books that sold over 30 million copies worldwide. In ad ...
.
Joseph W. Ferman was the business manager of Mercury Publications from 1940 to 1950. The Mercury art director from 1938 to 1958 was designer
George Salter
George Salter (5 October 1897 – 31 October 1967), born Georg Salter, was an originally German, and from 1940 onwards an American book cover designer. He revolutionized cover design for books. He claimed worldwide fame for his design for Alfred D ...
, who created about 750 covers for Mercury Publications during that time frame. After leaving the art director position, he continued to design covers for Mercury.The Mercury Press name continued on ''Fantasy and Science Fiction'' (eventually its only publication) under Joseph and his son Edward L. Ferman until F&SF was sold to
Gordon Van Gelder
Gordon Van Gelder (born 1966) is an American science fiction editor. From 1997 until 2014, Van Gelder was editor and later publisher of ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'', for which he has twice won the Hugo Award for Best Editor Sho ...