The first issue of the Strand Magazine was published in January, 1891, named for its location off the Strand, London. Herbert Greenhough Smith was the editor from 1891 to 1930. The magazine enjoyed great popularity from the start, publishing factual pieces as well as short stories and serialized fiction. Smith aimed the content at mass readership and realized an immediate circulation of 300,000, aided by the first serialized appearance of Sherlock Holmes, written by A. Conan Doyle during that startup year.

A simultaneous edition was printed in the United States, its content similar but altered to reflect different interests. Thus The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes benefitted from an immediate readership in two nations. Agatha Christie benefitted similarly from the printing of her Hercule Poirot stores in The Labors of Hercules. When you add to that list the authors Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham, Leo Tolstoy, and H. G. Wells, to name just a few, one can understand the popularity of the magazine.

The U.S. edition was discontinued in 1916 due to World War I. The Strand Magazine ceased publication in the U.K. in March 1950, but was revived in the U.S. in 1998 as a quarterly magazine, featuring such American writers as Ray Bradbury, John Mortimer, and Tennessee Williams. The current editor, Andrew Gulli, has gained a reputation for discovering previously unpublished works by Hemingway, Alcott, Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others.

It is with pride that this author announces his association with this historic magazine with the printing of an excerpt from LOST OASIS in the magazine’s blog, appearing now in its summer issue (www.strandmag.com). Be sure to check it out.