ABSTRACT
This chapter draws connections between the rhetoric and professional discourse of transatlantic periodical publishing on the eve of the First World War and Buchan's development of the modern spy hero as an expert reader of diverse global media and cultural codes. By the start of the First World War, the demise of the three-decker novel and the expansion of new media markets such as cinema, reprints, and pulp magazines had led to organized professional efforts to read, interpret, and control untapped audiences of popular readers as potential consumers. The chapter suggests that Buchan's own successful career as a publisher, together with his expert navigation of modern media and the competitive transatlantic market for popular fiction, illustrates the sophisticated literary and cultural context from which one of modern spy literature's earliest, and arguably most famous, adventure heroes first emerged.
