Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM) is an 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 fictitious author Ellery Queen, who wrote novels and short stories about a fictional detective named Ellery Queen.
From 1993, EQMM changed its cover title to be Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (without the ‘s), but the table of contents still retains the full name.
Background
Ellery Queen was the pseudonym of the team of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, who had been writing under the name since 1929. EQMM was created to provide a market for mystery fiction above the common run of pulp crime magazines of the day. Dannay served as the magazine’s editor-in-chief (although still under the name Ellery Queen) from its creation until his death in 1982, when managing editor Eleanor Sullivan succeeded to the post.
Following her death in 1991, Janet Hutchings became editor of EQMM.
History
Mystery League and pre-EQMM era (1933-1934)
Around 4 years after Ellery Queen’s successful debut, The Roman Hat Mystery, Dannay and Lee decided to produce a magazine that would publish only quality mystery fiction.
Their first attempt, Mystery League, a monthly magazine for mystery fiction, debuted in October 1933, with Dannay and Lee as its only employees. What was unusual about Mystery League was that when most of the mystery magazines at the time were digests that would cut long novels into pieces before publishing them, Mystery League published only complete short novels, which helped to maintain the quality of the stories it published while leading to a higher selling price of 25¢. When America was still recovering from Great Depression, it was too high a price for most people to purchase a magazine. Therefore, the magazine ceased publication after only four issues, but its basic principle of publishing complete short mystery novels of high quality is inherited by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
Creation (1941)
In the fall of 1941, Dannay and Lee gave their attempt to create a magazine for short mystery fictions a second try by creating the Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine under the ownership of Lawrence E. Spivakof The Mercury Press. With little involvement of Lee, Dannay assumed primary editorial responsibility for the magazine, serving as its editor-in-chief from 1941 until his death in 1982.
The magazine debuted as quarterly, and thanks to its popularity, it went bimonthly in the following year and finally went monthly in 1946.
Just like'” Mystery League, the first issue of EQMM contained 7 complete mystery stories from Dashiell Hammett, Margery Ellingham, T.S. Stribling, Anthony Abbot, Cornell Woolrich, Fredrick Hazlitt Brennanand Ellery Queen himself. Dannay admitted in his message to readers that “This first issue is frankly experimental. Our belief that a large public exists which impatiently awaits such publication can only be confirmed by that public.” In sharp contrary to Mystery League’s failure, the first issue is enthusiastically welcomed by the public, selling more than 90,000 copies, which is far beyond Dannay and the publisher’s expectation.
Since then, EQMM has become the Amwtican leading magazine of the genre and is credited with setting the standard for the modern crime and mystery short stories and keeping short stories of the genre alive and flourish.
Frederic Dannay’s editorship (1941-1982)
Frederic Dannay served as editor-in-chief for EQMM for more than 40 years. As an editor, Dannay set his goal to establish a more respectful reputation for mysteries and keep the genre strong. Dannay explained his manifesto for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine as being to “raise the sights of mystery writers generally to a genuine literary form,” to “encourage good writing among our colleagues by offering a practical market not otherwise available,” and to “develop new writers seeking expression in the genre.”
To achieve his goal, Dannay worked hard to explore and represent every aspect of mysteries, expanding the variety of materials of EQMM to a great extent, while he believed his efforts also served to cater to the widest possible range of tastes and attract more audience.
One of his major efforts was to find and publish stories written by big names with elements of crime or mystery, and as a result, more than forty Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, including William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, have works published in EQMM.
Dannay also set a global orientation for EQMM, publishing works from writers all over the worlds, from works by English writers like Agatha Christie to first English translation of the work of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Besides, with his bravery and vision, Dannay pushed those boundaries followed by other magazines that days, publishing the first black detective story(“Corollary” by Hughes Allison) in EQMM in 1948.
The first EQMM short story contest was held in 1946. William Faulkner, the future Noble Prize winner, wrote a new story for the contest and won second prize, while the first prize went to Manly Wade Wellman.
After the first few years of Dannay reprinted stories he had gathered for his own personal collection of mysteries while slowly adding previously unpublished stories by both famous and unknown authors,[4]EQMM began accepting novels from the general public in 1948.
As another effort to expand the variety of materials of the magazines, during Dannay’s editorship, Department of First Stories was established in 1949,[11] which aims at publishing works from new writers and fostering new talent.
Dannay himself published more than 500 first stories by first-time writers, and many of them, including Stanley Ellinand David Morrell, grew to became famous writers. In 1953, EQMM bought Black Mask Magazine, and turned it into a special department which “features harder-edged works of crime, noir, and private-eye writers.” (Black Mask ceased to exist in EQMM in the 1970s but was reinstated in 2008 and continues to run today.)
Several Spin-offs of the magazine came into being and died during this period. Overseas editions for US troops appeared in May 1945 and ceased publication in June 1946 after the end of World War II and the return of US troops. They were almost identical to the normal US edition of EQMM, with the only difference of a title “Special Edition for the Armed Forces Overseas” or “Overseas Edition for the Armed Services” printed on the cover. Since advertisements were not allowed in this kind of publication for the US army, the opening 3 pages of this edition, where the ads would typically be, were replaced with an additional story. Otherwise, an additional puzzle would be added at the end as a make-up.
An Australian reprint edition started from July 1947 and ceased publication in November 1964, and a UK reprint edition was available between February 1953 and September 1964. Spin-offs that translated the magazine into other languages like Japanese, French, Italian, German were all once available, but all ceased publication eventually.
Eleanor Sullivan’s editorship (1982-1991)
After Frederic Dannay passed away in 1982, Eleanor Sullivan succeeded his place and began to serve as editor of EQMM. She was the managing editor of the magazine from 1970 to 1982, hand-picked by Frederic Dannay after an interview, and she has written many articles under a pen name for newspapers, magazines and books.
During Eleanor Sullivan’s editorship, in 1985, The EQMM Readers Award began: it is an annual award selected by readers of EQMM of their favorite stories. Since then, it has become one of the most important awards of its genre. The first EQMM Readers Award went to Clark Howard.
Eleanor Sullivan also served as editor-in-chief of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine from 1975 to 1981, which helped to establish a closer relationship between EQMM and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. After Eleanor Sullivan became editor of EQMM and Cathleen Jordan became the editor of AHMM in 1982, they worked together to keep both magazines prosperous, and they often passed stories to each other to find a more suitable place for them.
Janet Hutchings’s editorship (1991- )
Janet Hutchings began her career as editor and publisher at the Doubleday Book Clubs, where she was given opportunities to read for the Mystery Guild, to which almost every mystery or crime novel waiting to be published in America would be submitted for possible inclusion.
This experience greatly enhanced Hutchings’ passion for mysteries, and later she became Mystery Editor for Walker & Company and published a series of anthologies of stories from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The connection gave her the opportunity of meeting Eleanor Sullivan at the EQMM 50th Anniversary Party in 1991 and later being interviewed as a possible successor to the magazine’s editor. After Eleanor Sullivan died in 1991, she succeeded as editor of EQMM and has held the position since then.
Hutchings inherited Dannay’s principle of the magazines, making quality the only standard while trying to maintain a great variety of the genre mysteries and a global focus. She described in an interview that her aim has always been to try to “make EQMM’s umbrella as wide as that of the genre”, and publish stories from the broadest possible range of mysteries. In 2003, Hutchings established the Passport to Crime department, which would translate works from other languages on a regular basis. Hutchings explained the change with Passport to Crime as the magazine scouting more actively for stories in other languages instead of just waiting for submission from foreign writers.
During Janet’s editorship, EQMM embraced the trend of digitalization. In the early 1990s, EQMM converted to desktop publishing, and in 2011 Hutchings admitted that she now read submissions entirely on a Kindle.
Besides, the official website of EQMM offered information about the magazines to both subscribers and writers. In January 2018, EQMM launched its first web-only columns, “Stranger Than Fiction”, on its official website. Written by Dean Jobb and scheduled to be updated monthly for free, the new column studies and presents true crime cases, a topic that EQMM used to lack.
Reputation
The magazine has several distinguishing hallmarks, most of which were established during the days of Frederic Dannay’s editorship and have been maintained and strengthened since then. It is believed that these characteristics have helped EQMM to survive and flourish for more than 75 years while retaining its reputation as the leading periodical in the genre. They include focus on quality and variety and its global orientation.
Throughout its history it has actively encouraged new writers, and today, when most major publications will only accept submissions through literary agents, EQMM still accepts submissions over the transom (that is, unsolicited submissions through the mail).
Unsolicited online submissions are now also accepted through an online submission manager as long as they follow the writers’ guidelines. The magazine’s “Department of First Stories” has introduced hundreds of new writers, many of whom became regular contributors.
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Subscription
Starting with its January/February 2017 issue, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine updated its annual subscription format to feature a total of 6 issues per year, all of them 192-page double issues. The magazine rationalized that the new format allowed for expanded articles and more special features, as well as greater editorial flexibility overall. The change came with no increase in the annual subscription price
Download Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
The magazine is available for download as eBook on online retailers such as Amazon (see here). Online editions are also available through magazine’s website.
Download Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine PDFs For Free
In our search we did not encounter any deal by the magazine offering excerpts or full issues for free. This section will be updated with links to such free copies if such deals become available.
