Series:Famous Fantastic Mysteries

Title: Famous Fantastic Mysteries

Publishers:
 * The Frank A. Munsey Company 1939-1942
 * All-Fiction Field, Inc. A Popular Publication 1943-1951
 * Popular Publications, Inc. 1951-1953

Editor: Mary Gnaedinger

Issues: 81

Series: The Reader's Viewpoint - letter column and editorial content.

Introduction
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From Tuck's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy :

A magazine founded to reprint fantasy and sf material from the old Frank A. Munsey magazines (Argosy, All-Story, etc.). It became popular in its initial year. Some novels were serialised in the early issues, until the companion Fantastic Novels was started and began publishing complete novels. (The latter, however, had only 5 issues at that time and was combined    back into FFM). The covers were only coloured story listings until Feb 1940, when paintings by F. Paul and V. Finlay began. After FFM was bought by Popular Pubs, in 1943 the fiction policy changed to the reprinting of novels that had previously appeared only in    book form. Some quite good works were presented; these are covered below. From Aug 1947 to Apr 1950 there was a section "Masters of Fantasy" (drawings    and a short appreciation) by N. Austin. The magazine became "streamlined" from Jan 1951 - smaller in size and with no advertisements - but soon returned to its older format. Lawrence was the principal artist; in conjunction with Fantastic Novels, portfolios of work by Lawrence and V. Finlay were published. Popular's FFM also had Fantastic Novels (2nd series) as a companion for a period, as well as A. Merritt's Fantasy and ''Super Science Stories' (2nd series). The Munsey FFM was used as a source for the fiction in the Canadian Super Science (Feb 1945 - Dec 1945).

Cover Artists

 * Lawrence [39]
 * Virgil Finlay [27]
 * Norman Saunders [4]
 * Frank R. Paul [3]
 * De Soto [1]
 * Note: The first five issues do not have any cover art.

Interior Artists

 * Virgil Finlay [217]
 * Lawrence [180]
 * Frank R. Paul [86]
 * Hannes Bok [21]
 * Neil Austin [17]
 * Ronald Clyne [6]
 * Leydenfrost [4]
 * uncredited [36]
 * Other artists with 1 or 2 illustrations are Biedermann, Charles E. Kroma, Chas. McNutt, Fawcette, Fox, Frank Kramer, Napoli, Ted Palmer, and V. E. Pyles. The  Neil Austin illustrations are for the "Masters of Fantasy" series which he authored.
 * Note: The number in parentheses is the total number of individual illustrations.

Image Sources
The cover images for these magazines supplied by Phil Stephensen-Payne's "Galactic Central"

Bibliographic Tasks