The Wide World Magazine was a British monthly magazine founded in 1898 by George Newnes, specialising in true-life adventure narratives gathered from contributors across the British Empire and beyond. The magazine's editorial tagline was "truth is stranger than fiction," and its long-running success as a popular adventure-journalism venue made it one of the principal British sources of Oak Island coverage in the early twentieth century.
The 1920 "Pirate Gold" article placed the Oak Island story before British readership during a relatively quiet period in the search itself (between the Old Gold Salvage and Wrecking Company's 1909 venture and the William Chappell expedition of 1931). British magazine coverage of Oak Island in this period contributed to the international awareness of the search that subsequently drew British investors and researchers including Rupert Furneaux to the Oak Island question.
What this source documents
British adventure-magazine treatment of the Oak Island search in 1920; coverage during the inter-expedition period between Old Gold (1909) and the Chappell venture (1931); an example of the early-twentieth-century British magazine engagement with American-and-Canadian treasure-hunting stories that shaped subsequent British research interest in Oak Island.
Why it matters
The Wide World article is part of the British magazine documentary record of Oak Island that helped to establish the search in British popular awareness in the period before Rupert Furneaux's 1972 The Money Pit Mystery placed Oak Island firmly in British research literature. For research questions involving the British-press history of Oak Island, including the period before the Furneaux thesis on British military involvement in the Money Pit's construction, The Wide World article is a relevant early reference.