The first three issues were published as a boys' magazine. After converting to a men's fiction pulp from February 1904 it found success with the inclusion of H. Rider Haggard's 'Ayesha' (1905) and subsequently went on to carve out a niche as a middle-of-the-road family magazine. The Popular Magazine also published works by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, Morgan Robertson, H. G. Wells, Rafael Sabatini, Zane Grey and James Francis Dwyer.
[Source: Galactic Central]
Between Vol 1 No 1 (Nov. 1903) and Vol 13 No 6 (Oct. 1909) all issues of The Popular Magazine were dated with a month and year that indicated when each issue was to be taken "off" sale ( a common practice at that time). Volume 14 (15 Oct. 1909 - 1 Jan. 1910) switched to being a semi-monthly - with all six issues were dated as either the 1st or 15th of the month (although the covers for the three issues at the end of each month were also labelled "Month-End Edition" on the cover).
From Vol 15 No 1 (January 1910) the magazine's publication details became complicated. As the Galactic Central database notes:
'The dates inside the magazine simply continued as the 1st and 15th of each month, but the covers were instead labelled as "First xxx Number" or "xxx Month-End Edition" respectively. In addition, the covers (alone) indicated the date the issue was published (e.g. v15 #1 was "Out Dec. 24th 1909"). It has not been possible to identify all the "out" dates precisely, but they were always from the previous month and started as the 24th on v15 #1, switched to the 10th & 25th in 1910, and then switched to 7th & 23rd in late 1911 or early 1912. This pattern continued until v33 #5 (15-Sep-1914). During this period, the issues below have been labelled as 1st xxx & 2nd xxx to match the cover designations, with an estimated "out" date listed in brackets below' ('Popular Magazine').
