n 1933 both cousins tried their hands at a magazine entitled Mystery League which only delivered four issues and failed. To quote Manfred B. Lee : "Mystery League Magazine was the child of the Queen imagination and early ambition. It was published on the proverbial shoelace... Fred and myself were the entire staff. We did not even have a secretary. We selected the stories, prepared copy, read proofs, dummied, sweated,...and almost literally swept out the office as well."

           
Above:  Lee as Ellery Queen (still in full Barnaby Ross/Ellery Queen mode) with publisher Sidney M. Biddell (R) whilst signing the first copy of the magazine (Oct 1933).

Sidney M. Biddell, previously failed with his Mystery League books, which used a newsstand and cigar store outlet at 50 cents a copy, now revived the idea in the form of a magazine called Mystery League. It contained in each issue three or four times the wordage of each of the former Mystery League books. In with Biddell on the business end of the new Mystery League Magazine  was Karl J. Weimer.

A fifth number was assembled but never printed. All covers were photographs by Ben Pinchot and the illustrations by Eugene Thurston. Whilst laboring over Mystery League they did acquire expertise on  anthologies...

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine was launched in the fall of 1941 when Dannay persuaded Lawrence E. Spivak of The Mercury Press (who subsequently founded and hosted the popular TV show Meet the Press) to let them take another try at a mystery magazine. EQMM quickly became, as it remains today, the top publication of its kind. Largely the brainchild of Fred Dannay, EQMM not only gave Ellery an outlet for their short stories which was self-owned but also it gave other authors the opportunity to showcase their works. They considered the so-called pulps unsuitable for their purpose because often the stories were poorly written or "trashy." And so, EQMM started as an experiment:

"As writers, readers, and collectors of detective-crime stories, we have for many years shouted the need for -- and deplored the lack of -- a quality publication devoted exclusively to the printing of the best detective-crime short-story literature... And so, Ellery Queen is editing and Lawrence E. Spivak is publishing this volume, which is planned as the first of a periodic anthology of detective-crime short stories, in which the sole editorial criterion will be quality."

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's goal was explained as follows "to raise the sights of mystery writers generally, to the target of a genuine and respected literary form and to encourage good writing among our colleagues by offering a practical market not otherwise available among American magazines, as well as to develop new writers seeking expression in the genre." *

* The exact origin of the quote is unknown. The earliest appearance as statement by Ellery Queen was in 1962's Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature (Crowell).

In pursuit of the first goal - to raise mystery writing to a respected literary form - he set about finding and publishing stories with elements of crime or mystery by great literary figures past and present. The result was the inclusion of more than forty Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners in EQMM - Rudyard Kipling, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and Alice Walker among them. 

Dannay was always the driving force of the magazine (just as Lee was primarily involved with the team's radio efforts). Manfred did but occasionally contribute to EQMM. However their contract with Lawrence E.Spivak did specify that in the event Dannay died or was drafted into World War II Lee would take over.

A pioneering scholar of the genre, especially the mystery short story, Dannay personally supervised every issue of the magazine until shortly before his death. He was an indefatigable finder and reprinter of "lost" gems from pulps and dime novels. He actively solicited his peers to write for the magazine and encouraged new writers, instituting a "department of first stories" under which heading he printed at least one story in each issue by an author new to the mystery genre.