Free Old Issues Strand Magazine Sources

This is the big list of free old issues Strand Magazine culled from various sources.

Now, you don’t have to click around to search for all the published past issues of The Strand Magazine dated back from 1891 to 1950.

They are all right here in one blog post for your reading pleasure and excitement.

The Strand Magazine was a monthly magazine that published short stories and popular nonfiction from January 1891 to March 1950; a total of 59 years.

All together there are 711 issues.

This British monthly magazine was founded Herbert Greenhough Smith, at that time working as an editor at another literary magazine, The Temple Bar.

It featured general interest articles, short stories, series stories and novels.

Besides, fictions and beautifully-drawn illustrations, The Strand has been also known for its brain teasers column called “Perplexities”.

The Strand Magazine was well received since its very first issue way back in January 1891.

Arthur Conan Doyle Strand Magazine

It was reported that The Strand Magazine became an immediate sensation after the publication of the first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Scandal in Bohemia.”

This is what Conan Doyle wrote to Herbert Greenhough Smith, he first editor of The Strand Magazine:

Foreigners used to recognise the English by their check suits. I think they will soon learn to do it by their Strand Magazines. Everybody on the Channel boat, except the man at the wheel, was clutching one.

(The Strand Magazine, 1891-1950 by Reginald Pound, London: Heinemann, 1966, Dawn Of A New Centur, P. 63) source

(The quote is also found in: Mirror Of The Century: The Strand Magazine 1891-1950, 1966, New York: A. S. Barnes And Co., Dawn Of A New Century, P. 63) source

The Strand Magazines is synonymous Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.

Back in those glory days, Arthur Conan Doyle was a major contributor with novels, short stories, poems and articles.

His first short story published in the third issue of The Strand Magazine titled “The Voice of Science” in March 1891.

It is accompanied with five illustrations drawn by British illustrator Walter Sydney Stacey.

You can read Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, including an interview with him in The Strand Magazine (UK) over here.

This is another source of some of his stories as published in The Strand Magazines:

A Scandal in Bohemia

The Adventures of the Speckled Band

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Final Problem

Sherlock Holmes Adventures

More Sherlock Holmes Adventures

Here is another source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle from The Strand Magazine.

Click here.

These are Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories as published in the United States version of The Strand magazine.

Click here.

It also ran stories by many other well-known authors, including Graham Greene, Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse, D. H. Lawrence, William Somerset Maugham, John Dickson Carr, H. G. Wells, Jerome Jerome, G. K. Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, Georges Simenon, and Aldous Huxley.

The three stories by Somerset Maugham published in The Strand Magazines are:

A Point Of Law (September 1904), An Irish Gentleman (September 1904) and A Marriage Of Convenience (December 1929).

Note: You can read “A point Of Law” and “An Irish Gentleman” from “Seventeen Lost Stories” By Somerset Maugham, Compiled By Craig V. Showalter over here.

The Strand Magazine United States Edition

This British monthly magazine also published a United States edition from February 1891 through February 1916.

The Strand Magazine is known for its iconic cover.

An evocative illustration of a street scene of a bygone era; looking eastwards down London’s Strand towards St Mary-le-Strand, with the title suspended on telegraph wires.

In the 1960s, English crime writer and founder of the Crime Writers Association, John Creasey, tried to bring the magazine back, but flopped after just one year.

Related: Free books by John Creasey found here and here.

In 1998, The Strand returned as a quarterly magazine.

It has published fictions by writers including John Mortimer, Ray Bradbury, Alexander McCall Smith, Ruth Rendell, Colin Dexter, Edward Hoch, James Grippando, and Tennessee Williams.

The magazine also features stories from emerging crime and mystery writers, other than stories by established writers.

This is an article from its first issue of the Strand Magazine published in December 1998.

It was written by the late Chris Willis, titled “The Story of The Strand”

The cover of the first issue The Strand Magazine 1999.

You find out more about The Strand Magazine over here.

Here is an informative site highlighting its story titles, writers and illustrators.