1. Background

2. Publication history
    Rural Publishing Corporation  Popular Fiction Publishing   Delaney   1970s and early 1980s  Terminus and successors 

3. Contents and reception
     Edwin Baird    Farnsworth Wright    Dorothy McIlwraith    Moskowitz, Carter, and Bellerophon    Wildside Press and after    Legacy  

4. Bibliographic details
    Anthologies   Canadian and British editions    Collectability  

5. Notes

6. References

7. Sources

8. Further reading

Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18.^[2] The first editor, Edwin Baird, printed early work by H. P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and Clark Ashton Smith, all of whom would go on to be popular writers, but within a year the magazine was in financial trouble. Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher, Rural Publishing Corporation, to Lansinger and refinanced Weird Tales, with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. The first issue under Wright's control was dated November 1924. The magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks it prospered over the next fifteen years. Under Wright's control the magazine lived up to its subtitle, "The Unique Magazine", and published a wide range of unusual fiction.

Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos stories first appeared in Weird Tales, starting with "The Call of Cthulhu" in 1928. These were well-received, and a group of writers associated with Lovecraft wrote other stories set in the same milieu. Robert E. Howard was a regular contributor, and published several of his Conan the Barbarian stories in the magazine, and Seabury Quinn's series of stories about Jules de Grandin, a detective who specialized in cases involving the supernatural, was very popular with the readers. Other well-liked authors included Nictzin Dyalhis, E. Hoffmann Price, Robert Bloch, and H. Warner Munn. Wright published some science fiction, along with the fantasy and horror, partly because when Weird Tales was launched there were no magazines specializing in science fiction, but he continued this policy even after the launch of magazines such as Amazing Stories in 1926. Edmond Hamilton wrote a good deal of science fiction for Weird Tales, though after a few years he used the magazine for his more fantastic stories, and submitted his space operas elsewhere.

In 1938 the magazine was sold to William Delaney, the publisher of Short Stories, and within two years Wright, who was ill, was replaced by Dorothy McIlwraith as editor. Although some successful new authors and artists, such as Ray Bradbury and Hannes Bok, continued to appear, the magazine is considered by critics to have declined under McIlwraith from its heyday in the 1930s. Weird Tales ceased publication in 1954, but since then numerous attempts have been made to relaunch the magazine, starting in 1973. The longest-lasting version began in 1988 and ran with an occasional hiatus for over 20 years under an assortment of publishers. In the mid-1990s the title was changed to Worlds of Fantasy & Horror because of licensing issues, with the original title returning in 1998. As of 2018, the most recent published issue was dated Spring 2014.

The magazine is regarded by historians of fantasy and science fiction as a legend in the field, with Robert Weinberg, author of a history of the magazine, considering it "the most important and influential of all fantasy magazines".^[3] Weinberg's fellow historian, Mike Ashley, is more cautious, describing it as "second only to Unknown in significance and influence",^[4] adding that "somewhere in the imagination reservoir of all U.S. (and many non-U.S.) genre-fantasy and horror writers is part of the spirit of Weird Tales".^[5]

Background

In the late 19th century, popular magazines typically did not print fiction to the exclusion of other content; they would include non-fiction articles and poetry as well. In October 1896, the Frank A. Munsey company's Argosy magazine was the first to switch to printing only fiction, and in December of that year it changed to using cheap wood-pulp paper. This is now regarded by magazine historians as having been the start of the pulp magazine era. For years pulp magazines were successful without restricting their fiction content to any specific genre, but in 1906 Munsey launched Railroad Man's Magazine, the first title that focused on a particular niche. Other titles that specialized in particular fiction genres followed, starting in 1915 with Detective Story Magazine, with Western Story Magazine following in 1919.^[3] Weird fiction, science fiction, and fantasy all appeared frequently in the pulps of the day, but by the early 1920s there was still no single magazine focused on any of these genres, though The Thrill Book, launched in 1919 by Street & Smith with the intention of printing "different", or unusual, stories, was a near miss.^[3][4]

In 1922, J. C. Henneberger, the publisher of College Humor and The Magazine of Fun, formed Rural Publishing Corporation of Chicago, in partnership with his former fraternity brother, J. M. Lansinger.^[5] Their first venture was Detective Tales, a pulp magazine that appeared twice a month, starting with the October 1, 1922 issue. It was initially unsuccessful, and as part of a refinancing plan Henneberger decided to publish another magazine that would allow him to split some of his costs between the two titles. Henneberger had long been an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, so he created a fiction magazine that would focus on horror, and titled it Weird Tales.^[6][7]

Publication history

Rural Publishing Corporation

Henneberger chose Edwin Baird, the editor of Detective Tales, to edit Weird Tales; Farnsworth Wright was first reader, and Otis Adelbert Kline also worked on the magazine, assisting Baird. Payment rates were low, usually between a quarter and a half cent per word; the budget went up to one cent per word for the most popular writers.^[7] Sales were initially poor, and Henneberger soon decided to change the format from the standard pulp size to large pulp, to make the magazine more visible. This had little long-term effect on sales, though the first issue at the new size, dated May 1923, was the only one that first year to sell out completely—probably because it contained the first instalment of a popular serial, The Moon Terror, by A.G. Birch.^[14][8]

The magazine lost a considerable amount of money under Baird's editorship: after thirteen issues, the total debt was over $40,000.^[9]{{refn|Lin Carter gives the debt as $41,000, and adds that the original capital was "reputedly" $11,000, meaning that during Baird's tenure the magazine had lost $52,000.^[9] L. Sprague de Camp quotes Henneberger's debt as "at least $43,000, and perhaps as much as $60,000".^[10]|group=notes}} In the meantime, Detective Tales had been retitled Real Detective Tales and was making a profit, as was College Humor. Henneberger decided to sell both magazines to Lansinger and invest the money in Weird Tales.^[14][11] This did not address the $40,000 in debts, much of which was owed to the magazine's printer. The printing company was owned by B. Cornelius, who agreed to Henneberger's suggestion that the debt should be converted to a majority interest in a new company, Popular Fiction Publishing. This did not eliminate all of the magazine's debts, but it meant that Weird Tales could continue to publish, and perhaps return to profitability. Cornelius agreed that if the magazine ever became profitable enough to repay him the $40,000 he had been owed, he would give up his shares in the company. Cornelius became the company treasurer; the business manager was William (Bill) Sprenger, who had been working for Rural Publishing. Henneberger had hopes of eventually refinancing the debt with the help of another printer, Hall Printing Company, owned by Robert Eastman.^[14]

Baird stayed with Lansinger, so Henneberger wrote to H. P. Lovecraft, who had sold some stories to Weird Tales, to see if he would be interested in taking the job. Henneberger offered ten weeks advance pay, but made it a condition that Lovecraft move to Chicago, where the magazine was headquartered. Lovecraft described Henneberger's plans in a letter to Frank Belknap Long as "a brand-new magazine to cover the field of Poe-Machen shudders". Lovecraft did not wish to leave New York, where he had recently moved with his new bride; his dislike of cold weather was another deterrent.^[14][12][13]{{refn|In the same letter to Long, the 34-year-old Lovecraft, who often affected the airs of an aged gentleman, declared "think of the tragedy of such a move for an aged antiquarian".^[12][14]|group=notes}} He spent several months considering the offer in mid-1924 without making a final decision, with Henneberger visiting him in Brooklyn more than once, but eventually either he declined or Henneberger simply gave up. By the end of the year Wright had been hired as the new editor of Weird Tales. The last issue under Baird's name was a combined May/June/July issue, with 192 pages—a much thicker magazine than the earlier issues. It was assembled by Wright and Kline, rather than Baird.^[15]

Popular Fiction Publishing

Henneberger gave Wright full control of Weird Tales, and did not get involved with story selection. In about 1921, Wright had begun to suffer from Parkinson's disease, and over the course of his editorship the symptoms grew gradually worse. By the end of the 1920s he was unable to sign his name, and by the late 1930s Bill Sprenger was helping him get to work and back home.^[15] The first issue with Wright as editor was dated November 1924, and the magazine immediately resumed a regular monthly schedule, with the format changing back to pulp again.^[12] The pay rate was initially low, with a cap of half a cent per word until 1926, when the top rate was increased to one cent per word. Some of Popular Fiction Publishing's debts were paid off over time, and the highest pay rate eventually rose to one and a half cents per word.{{#tag:ref|Jack Williamson recalls that Weird Tales was paying one cent per word, "rather more reliably" than Amazing Stories, in about 1931;^[17] and Hugh Cave quotes one cent per word as the rate in early 1933.^[18]|group=notes}} The magazine's cover price was high for the time. Robert Bloch recalled that "in the late Twenties and Thirties of this century...at a time when most pulp periodicals sold for a dime, its price was a quarter".^[19] Although Popular Fiction Publishing continued to be based in Chicago, the editorial offices were in Indianapolis for a while, at two separate addresses, but moved to Chicago towards the end of 1926. After a short period on North Broadway, the office moved to 840 North Michigan Avenue, where it would remain until 1938.^[20]

In 1927, Popular Fiction Publishing issued Birch's The Moon Terror, one of Weird Tales{{'}} more popular serials, as a hardcover book, including three other stories from the magazine's first year. One of the stories, "An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension", was by Wright himself. The book sold poorly, and it remained on offer in the pages of Weird Tales, at reduced prices, for twenty years.^[20][21] It was at one point provided as a bonus to readers who subscribed.^[22] In 1930 Cornelius launched a companion magazine, Oriental Stories, but the magazine was not a success, though it managed to last for over three years before Cornelius gave up.^[20][23] Another financial blow occurred in late 1930 when a bank failure froze most of the magazine's cash. Henneberger changed the schedule to bimonthly, starting with the February/March 1931 issue; six months later, with the August 1931 issue, the monthly schedule returned.^[24] Two years later Weird Tales' bank was still having financial problems, and payment to authors was being substantially delayed.^[25]

The Depression also hit the Hall Printing Company, which Henneberger had been hoping would take over the debt from Cornelius; Robert Eastman, the owner of Hall, at one point was unable to meet payroll. Eastman died in 1934, and with him went Henneberger's plans for recovering control of Weird Tales.^[20] The magazine advertised in the early science fiction pulps, usually highlighting one of the more science-fictional stories. Often the advertised story was by Edmond Hamilton, who was popular in the sf magazines. Wright also sold hardcovers of books by some of his more popular authors, such as Kline, in the pages of Weird Tales.^[26] Although the magazine was never greatly profitable, Wright was paid well. Robert Weinberg, author of a history of Weird Tales, records a rumor that Wright was unpaid for much of his work on the magazine, but according to E. Hoffmann Price, a close friend of Wright's who occasionally read manuscripts for him, Weird Tales was paying Wright about $600 a month in 1927.^[20]

Delaney

Cornelius retired in 1938, and Popular Fiction Publishing was sold to William J. Delaney, who was the publisher of Short Stories, a successful general fiction pulp magazine based in New York. Sprenger and Wright both received a share of the stock from Cornelius; Sprenger did not remain with the company but Wright moved to New York and stayed on as editor.^[24][26] Henneberger's share of Popular Fiction Publishing was converted to a small interest in the new company, Weird Tales, Inc., a subsidiary of Delaney's Short Stories, Inc.^[27][26] Dorothy McIlwraith, the editor of Short Stories, became Wright's assistant, and over the next two years Delaney tried to increase profits by adjusting the page count and price. An increase from 144 pages to 160 pages starting with the February 1939 issue, along with the use of cheaper (and hence thicker) paper, made the magazine thicker, but this failed to increase sales. In September 1939 the page count went down to 128, and the price was cut from 25 cents to 15 cents. From January 1940 the frequency was reduced to bimonthly, a change which stayed in effect until the end of the magazine's run fourteen years later.^[24][26] None of these changes had the intended effect, and sales continued to languish.^[26] In March 1940, Wright left and was replaced by McIlwraith as editor; histories of the magazine differ as to whether he was fired because of poor sales, or quit because of his health—he was by now suffering from Parkinson's so severely that he had trouble walking unassisted.^{[24][26][28][29]}{{#tag:ref|Ashley says Wright's health made it "impossible to continue", but Weinberg says Delaney let Wright go "in a move to further cut costs". However, in a later history of the magazine, Weinberg says that Wright, "who had been in bad health for many years, stepped down as editor", and does not give any other reason for his departure.^[24][26][29]|name="editors"|group=notes}} Wright then had an operation to reduce the pain with which he suffered, but never fully recovered. He died in June of that year.^[15]

McIlwraith's first issue was dated April 1940. She was assisted by Lamont Buchanan, who worked for her as associate editor and art editor for both Weird Tales and Short Stories. August Derleth also provided assistance and advice, although he had no formal connection with the magazine. Most of McIlwraith's budget went to Short Stories, since that was the more successful magazine;^[26][29] the payment rate for fiction in Weird Tales by 1953 was one cent per word, well below the top rates of other science fiction and fantasy magazines of the day.^[30] War shortages also caused problems, and the page count was reduced, first to 112 pages in 1943, and then to 96 pages the following year.^[26][29]

The price was increased to 20 cents in 1947, and again to 25 cents in 1949, but it was not only Weird Tales that was suffering—the entire pulp industry was in decline. Delaney switched the format to digest with the September 1953 issue, but there was to be no reprieve. In 1954, Weird Tales and Short Stories ceased publication; in both cases the last issue was dated September 1954.^[26][31]

1970s and early 1980s

In the mid-1950s, Leo Margulies, a well-known figure in the magazine publishing world, launched a new company, Renown Publications, with plans to publish several titles. He acquired the rights to both Weird Tales and Short Stories, and hoped to bring both magazines back. He abandoned a plan to restart Weird Tales in 1962, using reprints from the original magazine, after being advised by Sam Moskowitz that there was little market for weird and horror fiction at the time.^[33]{{refn|Delaney had attempted to revive Short Stories in 1956, but had only produced five issues; Margulies also tried to bring Short Stories back, and kept it alive from December 1957 until August 1959.^{[33][71][71][34]}|group=notes}} Instead Margulies mined the Weird Tales backfile for four anthologies which appeared in the early 1960s: The Unexpected, The Ghoul-Keepers, Weird Tales, and Worlds of Weird.^[71] The latter two were ghost-edited by Moskowitz, who proposed to Margulies that when the time was right to start the magazine up again, it should include reprints from obscure sources that Moskowitz had found, rather than just stories reprinted from the first incarnation of Weird Tales.^[71][76] These stories would be as good as new for most readers, and the money saved could be used for an occasional new story.^[35]

The new version of Weird Tales finally appeared from Renown Publications, in April 1973, edited by Moskowitz. It had weak distribution and sales were too low for sustainability; according to Moskowitz the average sales were 18,000 copies per issue, well short of the 23,000 that would have been needed for the magazine to survive. The fourth issue, dated Summer 1974, was the last, as Margulies closed down all his magazines except for Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, which was the only one that was making a profit. Mike Ashley, a science fiction magazine historian, records that Moskowitz was unwilling to continue in any case, as he was annoyed by Margulies's detailed involvement in the day-to-day editorial tasks such as editing manuscripts and writing introductions.^[35]

Margulies died the following year, and his widow, Cylvia Margulies, decided to sell the rights to the title. Forrest Ackerman, a science fiction fan and editor, was one of the interested parties, but she chose instead to sell to Victor Dricks and Robert Weinberg.^[36] Weinberg in turn licensed the title to Lin Carter, who interested a publisher, Zebra Books, in the project. The result was a series of four paperback anthologies, edited by Lin Carter, appearing between 1981 and 1983;^[37] these were originally planned to be quarterly, but in fact the first two both appeared in December 1980 and were both dated Spring 1981. The next was dated Fall 1981;^[38] Carter's rights to the title were terminated by Weinberg in 1982 for non-payment, but the fourth issue was already in the works and finally appeared with a date of Summer 1983.^[39]

In 1982 Sheldon Jaffery and Roy Torgeson met with Weinberg to propose taking over as licensees, but Weinberg decided not to pursue the offer. The following year, Brian Forbes approached Weinberg with another offer. Forbes' company, the Bellerophon Network, was an imprint of a Los Angeles company named The Wizard. Ashley reports that Weinberg was only able to contact Forbes by phone, and even that was not always reliable, so negotiations were slow. Forbes' editorial director was Gordon Garb and the fiction editor was Gil Lamont; Forrest Ackerman also assisted, mainly by obtaining material to include. There was a good deal of confusion between the various participants in the project:^[40] according to Locus, a science fiction trade journal, "Ackerman says he has had no contact with publisher Forbes, does not know what will happen to the material he put together, and is as much in the dark as everybody else. Lamont says that he is still renegotiating his contract and is not sure where he stands".^[41] The original plan was for the first issue to appear in August 1984, dated July/August, but before it appeared the decision was taken to change the contents, and a new, completely reset issue finally appeared at the end of the year, dated Fall 1984. Even with this delay a final agreement had not yet been reached with Weinberg over licensing. Only 12,500 copies were printed; these were sent to two distributors who both went into bankruptcy. As a result, few copies were sold, and Forbes was not paid by the distributors. Despite the financial setback, Forbes attempted to continue, and a second issue eventually appeared. Its cover date was Winter 1985 but it was not published until June 1986. Few copies were printed; reports vary between 1,500 and 2,300 in total. Mark Monsolo was the fiction editor, but Garb continued as editorial director; Lamont was no longer involved with the magazine.^[40]

Terminus and successors

In April 1995, HBO announced they had plans to turn Weird Tales into a three-episode anthology show similar to their Tales from the Crypt series. The deal for the rights was facilitated by screenwriters Mark Patrick Carducci and Peter Atkins. Directors Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, and Oliver Stone were executive producers, with each one expected to direct an episode. Stone was to be director of the pilot, but the series never came to fruition.^[44]

No issues appeared in 1997, but in 1998 Scithers and Schweitzer negotiated a deal with Warren Lupine of DNA Publications which allowed them to start publishing Weird Tales under license once again. The first issue was dated Summer 1998, and, other than the omission of the Winter 1998 issue, a regular quarterly schedule was maintained for the next four and a half years. Sales were weak, never rising above 6,000 copies, and DNA began to experience financial difficulties. Wildside Press, owned by John Betancourt, joined DNA and Terminus Publishing as co-publisher, starting with the July/August 2003 issue, and Weird Tales returned to a mostly regular schedule for a few months. A long hiatus ended with the December 2004 issue, which appeared in early 2005; this was the last issue under the arrangement with DNA. Wildside Press then bought Weird Tales, and Betancourt again joined Scithers and Schweitzer as co-editor.^[32][43]

The first Wildside Press edition appeared in September 2005, and starting with the following issue, dated February 2006, the magazine was able to stay on a more or less bimonthly schedule for some time. In early 2007, Wildside announced a revamp of Weird Tales, naming Stephen H. Segal the editorial and creative director and later recruiting Ann VanderMeer as the new fiction editor.^[76] In January 2010, the magazine announced Segal was leaving the top editorial post to become an editor at Quirk Books. VanderMeer was elevated to editor-in-chief, Mary Robinette Kowal joined the staff as art director and Segal became senior contributing editor.^[45]

On August 23, 2011, John Betancourt announced that Wildside Press would be selling Weird Tales to Marvin Kaye and John Harlacher of Nth Dimension Media. Marvin Kaye took over chief editorial duties. Issue 359, the first under the new publishers, was published in late February 2012. Some months before the release of issue 359, a special World Fantasy Convention preview issue was given away for free to interested attendees.^{[46][47][48][49]} As of April 2018, the most recent issue to appear was dated Spring 2014.^[50] Despite this, Harlacher continues to sell 4-issue subscriptions to Weird Tales, with no updates provided on the magazine's website regarding development of future issues of the magazine.^[51]

Contents and reception

Henneberger gave Weird Tales the subtitle "The Unique Magazine" from the first issue. Henneberger had been hoping for submissions of "off-trail", or unusual, material. He later recalled talking to three well-known Chicago writers, Hamlin Garland, Emerson Hough, and Ben Hecht, each of whom had said they avoided writing stories of "fantasy, the bizarre, and the outré"^[7] because of the likelihood of rejection by existing markets. He added "I must confess that the main motive in establishing Weird Tales was to give the writer free rein to express his innermost feelings in a manner befitting great literature".^[7]

Edwin Baird

Edwin Baird, the first editor of Weird Tales, was not an ideal choice for the job as he disliked horror stories; his expertise was in crime fiction, and most of the material he acquired was bland and unoriginal.^[6][7] The writers Henneberger had been hoping to publish, such as Garland and Hough, failed to submit anything to Baird, and the magazine published mostly traditional ghost fiction, with many of the stories narrated by characters in lunatic asylums, or told in diary format.^[52][53] The cover story for the first issue was "Ooze", by Anthony M. Rud; there was also the first installment of a serial, "The Thing of A Thousand Shapes", by Otis Adelbert Kline, and 22 other stories. Ashley suggests that the better pulp writers from whom Baird did manage to acquire material, such as Francis Stevens and Austin Hall, were sending Baird stories which had already been rejected elsewhere.^[110]

In the middle of the year Baird received five stories submitted by H. P. Lovecraft; Baird bought all five of them. Lovecraft, who had been persuaded by friends to submit the stories, included a cover letter that was so remarkably negative about the quality of the manuscripts that Baird published it in the September 1923 issue, with a note appended saying that he had bought the stories "despite the foregoing, or because of it".^[111] However, Baird insisted that the stories be resubmitted as typed double-spaced manuscripts; Lovecraft disliked typing, and initially decided to resubmit only one story, "Dagon".^[54] It appeared in the October 1923 issue, which was the most noteworthy of Baird's tenure, since it included stories by three writers who would become frequent contributors to Weird Tales: as well as Lovecraft, it marked the first appearance in the magazine of Frank Owen and Seabury Quinn.^[9][55]

Robert Weinberg, in his history of Weird Tales, agrees with Ashley that the quality of Baird's issues was poor, but comments that some good stories were published: "it was just that the percentage of such stories was dismally small".^[53] Weinberg singles out "A Square of Canvas" by Rud, and "Beyond the Door" by Paul Suter as "exceptional";^[53] both appeared in the April 1923 issue. Weinberg also regards "The Floor Above" by M. L. Humphries and "Penelope" by Vincent Starrett, both from the May 1923 issue, and "Lucifer" by John Swain, from the November 1923 issue, as memorable, and comments that "The Rats in the Walls", in the March 1924 issue, was one of Lovecraft's finest stories. It is unclear whether Baird or Henneberger was responsible for buying Lovecraft's stories; in one of Lovecraft's letters he makes it clear that Baird was keen to acquire his stories, but Henneberger has said that he overrode Baird and that Baird did not like Lovecraft's writing.^[56] It was Henneberger who came up with another idea involving Lovecraft: Henneberger contacted Harry Houdini and made arrangements to have Lovecraft ghost-write a story for him using a plot supplied by Houdini. The story, "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", appeared under Houdini's name in the May/June/July 1924 issue, though it was nearly lost—Lovecraft left the typed manuscript on the train he took to New York to get married, and as a result spent much of his wedding day retyping the manuscript from the longhand copy he still had.^[57][58]

The May/June/July 1924 issue included another story by Lovecraft under another name: "The Loved Dead", a story by C. M. Eddy Jr. which included a mention of necrophilia.^[120][59] According to Eddy, this led to the magazine being removed from the newsstands in several cities, and beneficial publicity for the magazine, helping sales, but in his history of Weird Tales Robert Weinberg reports that he found no evidence of the magazine being banned, and the financial state of the magazine implies there was no benefit to sales either.^[60] However, S. T. Joshi has said the magazine was indeed removed from newsstands in Indiana.^[61]

The cover art during Baird's tenure was dull; Ashley calls it "unattractive",^[6] and Weinberg describes the color scheme of the first issue's cover as "less than inspired", though he considers the next month's cover to be an improvement. He adds that from the May 1923 issue "the covers plunged into a pit of mediocrity". In Weinberg's opinion the poor cover art, frequently by R. M. Mally, was probably partly to blame for the magazine's lack of success under Baird.^[62] Weinberg also regards the interior art during the magazine's first year as very weak; most of the interior drawings were small, and with little of the atmosphere one would expect from a horror magazine. All the illustrations were by Heitman, whom Weinberg describes as "... notable for his complete lack of imagination. Heitman's specialty was taking the one scene in a frightening story that featured nothing at all frightening or weird and illustrating that".^[63][64]

Farnsworth Wright

The new editor, Farnsworth Wright, was much more willing than Baird had been to publish stories that did not fit into any of the existing pulp categories. Ashley describes Wright as "erratic" in his selections, but under his guidance the magazine steadily improved in quality.^[66] His first issue, November 1924, was little better than those edited by Baird, although it included two stories by new writers, Frank Belknap Long and Greye La Spina, who became popular contributors.^[67] Over the following year, Wright established a group of writers as regulars, including Long and La Spina, and published many stories by writers who would be closely associated with the magazine for the next decade and more. In April 1925, Nictzin Dyalhis's first story, "When the Green Star Waned", appeared; although Weinberg regards it as very dated, it was highly regarded at the time, with Wright listing it in 1933 as the most popular story to appear in Weird Tales. That issue also contained the first instalment of La Spina's novel Invaders from the Dark, which Baird had rejected as "too commonplace". It proved to be extremely popular with readers, and Weinberg comments that Baird's rejection was "just one of the many mistakes made by the earlier editor".^[131]

Wright initially rejected Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", but eventually bought it, and printed it in the February 1928 issue.^[69] This was the first tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, a fictional universe in which Lovecraft set several stories. Over time other writers began to contribute their own stories with the same shared background, including Frank Belknap Long, August Derleth, E. Hoffmann Price, and Donald Wandrei. Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith were friends of Lovecraft's, but did not contribute Cthulhu stories; instead Howard wrote sword and sorcery fiction, and Smith produced a series of high fantasy stories, many of which were part of his Hyperborean cycle.^[66] Robert Bloch, later to become well known as the writer of the movie Psycho, began publishing stories in Weird Tales in 1935; he was a fan of Lovecraft's work, and asked Lovecraft's permission to include Lovecraft as a character in one of his stories, and to kill the character off. Lovecraft gave him permission, and reciprocated by killing off a thinly disguised version of Bloch in one of his own stories not long afterwards.^[70]{{refn|Bloch's story was "The Shambler From the Stars", which appeared in the September 1935 issue; Lovecraft's riposte was "The Haunter of the Dark", in December 1936.^[70][71]|group=notes}} Edmond Hamilton, a leading early writer of space opera, became a regular, and Wright also published science fiction stories by J. Schlossel and Otis Adelbert Kline.^[52] Tennessee Williams' first sale was to Weird Tales, with a short story titled "The Vengeance of Nitocris". This was published in the August 1928 issue under the author's real name, Thomas Lanier Williams.^[72]Weird Tales' subtitle was "The Unique Magazine", and Wright's story selections were as varied as the subtitle promised;^[73] he was willing to print strange or bizarre stories with no hint of the fantastic if they were unusual enough to fit in the magazine.^[74] Although Wright's editorial standards were broad, and although he personally disliked the restrictions that convention placed on what he could publish, he did exercise caution when presented with material that might offend his readership.^[66][144] E. Hoffmann Price records that his story "Stranger from Kurdistan" was held after purchase for six months before Wright printed it in the July 1925 issue; the story includes a scene in which Christ and Satan meet, and Wright was worried about the possible reader reaction. The story nevertheless proved to be very popular, and Wright reprinted it in the December 1929 issue. He also published "The Infidel's Daughter" by Price, a satire of the Ku Klux Klan, which drew an angry letter and a cancelled subscription from a Klan member. Price later recalled Wright's response: "a story that arouses controversy is good for circulation ... and anyway it would be worth a reasonable loss to rap bigots of that caliber".^[75] Wright also printed George Fielding Eliot's "The Copper Bowl", a story about a young woman being tortured; she dies when her torturer forces a rat to eat through her body. Weinberg suggests that the story was so gruesome that it would have been difficult to place in a magazine even fifty years later.^[76]

On several occasions Wright rejected a story of Lovecraft's only to reconsider later; de Camp suggests that Wright's rejection at the end of 1925 of Lovecraft's "In the Vault", a story about a mutilated corpse taking revenge on the undertaker responsible, was because it was "too gruesome", but Wright changed his mind a few years later, and the story eventually appeared in April 1932.^[77] Wright also rejected Lovecraft's "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" in mid-1933. Price had revised the story before passing it to Wright, and after Wright and Price discussed the story, Wright bought it, in November of that year.^[78] Wright turned down Lovecraft's novel At the Mountains of Madness in 1935, though in this case it was probably because of the story's length—running a serial required paying an author for material that would not appear until two or three issues later, and Weird Tales often had little cash to spare. In this case he did not change his mind.^[79]

Quinn was Weird Tales' most prolific author, with a long-running sequence of stories about a detective, Jules de Grandin, who investigated supernatural events, and for a while he was the most popular writer in the magazine.{{refn|On a business trip to New Orleans, Quinn was taken to an upmarket brothel by his business associates, and discovered that the women who worked there were regular readers of Weird Tales. When they discovered who he was, they offered him their services free-of-charge.^[80]|group=notes}} Other regular contributors included Paul Ernst, David H. Keller, Greye La Spina, Hugh B. Cave, and Frank Owen, who wrote fantasies set in an imaginary version of the Far East.^[66] C.L. Moore's story "Shambleau", her first sale, appeared in Weird Tales in November 1933; Price visited the Weird Tales offices shortly after Wright read the manuscript for it, and recalls that Wright was so enthusiastic about the story that he closed the office, declaring it "C.L. Moore day".^[81] The story was very well received by readers, and Moore's work, including her stories about Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith, appeared almost exclusively in Weird Tales over the next three years.^[66][82]As well as fiction, Wright printed a substantial amount of poetry, with at least one poem included in most issues. Originally this often included reprints of poems such as Edgar Allan Poe's "El Dorado", but soon most of the poetry was original, with contributions coming from Lovecraft, Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, among many others.^[83][84][85] Lovecraft's contributions included ten of his "Fungi from Yuggoth" poems, a series of sonnets on weird themes that he wrote in 1930.^[86]

The artwork was an important element of the magazine's personality, with Margaret Brundage, who painted many covers featuring nudes for Weird Tales, perhaps the best known artist.^[66] Many of Brundage's covers were for stories by Seabury Quinn, and Brundage later commented that once Quinn realized that Wright always commissioned covers from Brundage that included a nude, "he made sure that each de Grandin story had at least one sequence where the heroine shed all her clothes".^[87] For over three years in the early 1930s, from June 1933 to August/September 1936, Brundage was the only cover artist Weird Tales used.^[87][88] Another prominent cover artist was J. Allen St. John, whose covers were more action-oriented, and who designed the title logo used from 1933 until 2007.^[66] Hannes Bok's first professional sale was to Weird Tales, for the cover of the December 1939 issue; he became a frequent contributor over the next few years.^[89]

During the 1930s, Brundage's rate for a cover painting was $90. Finlay received $100 for his first cover, which appeared in 1937, over a year after his first interior illustrations were used; Weinberg suggests that the higher fee was partly to cover postage, since Brundage lived in Chicago and delivered her artwork in person, but it was also because Brundage's popularity was beginning to decline. When Delaney acquired the magazine in late 1938, the fee for a cover painting was cut to $50, and in Weinberg's opinion the quality of the artwork declined immediately. Nudes no longer appeared, though it is not known if this was a deliberate policy on Delaney's part. In 1939 a campaign by Fiorello LaGuardia, the mayor of New York, to eliminate sex from the pulps led to milder covers, and this may also have had an effect.^[94]In 1936, Howard committed suicide, and the following year Lovecraft died.^[170] There was so much unpublished work by Lovecraft {{refn|The stories were submitted to Weird Tales by August Derleth, who had corresponded with Lovecraft.^[80]|group=notes}} that Wright was able to use that he printed more material under Lovecraft's byline after his death than before.^[95] In Howard's case, there was no such trove of stories available, but other writers such as Henry Kuttner provided similar material.^[24] By the end of Wright's tenure as editor, many of the writers who had become strongly associated with the magazine were gone; Kuttner, and others such as Price and Moore, were still writing, but Weird Tales rates were too low to attract submissions from them. Clark Ashton Smith had stopped writing, and two other writers who were well-liked, G.G. Pendarves and Henry Whitehead, had died.^[96]

Except for a couple of short-lived magazines such as Strange Tales and Tales of Magic and Mystery, and a weak challenge from Ghost Stories, all between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, Weird Tales had little competition for most of Wright's sixteen years as editor. In the early 1930s, a series of pulp magazines began to appear that became known as "weird menace" magazines. These lasted until the end of the decade, but despite the name there was little overlap in subject matter between them and Weird Tales: the stories in the weird menace magazines appeared to be based on occult or supernatural events, but at the end of the tale the mystery was always revealed to have a logical explanation.^[97] In 1935 Wright began running weird detective stories to try to attract some of the readers of these magazines to Weird Tales, and asked readers to write in with comments. Reader reaction was uniformly negative, and after a year he announced that there would be no more of them.^[98]

In 1939 two more serious threats appeared, both launched to compete directly for Weird Tales' readers. Strange Stories appeared in February 1939 and lasted for just over two years; Weinberg describes it as "top-quality",^[96] though Ashley is less complimentary, describing it as largely unoriginal and imitative.^[99] The following month the first issue of Unknown appeared from Street & Smith.^[100] Fritz Leiber submitted several of his "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories to Wright, but Wright rejected all of them (as did McIlwraith when she took over the editorship). Leiber subsequently sold them all to John W. Campbell for Unknown; Campbell commented each time to Leiber that "these would be better in Weird Tales". The stories grew into a very popular sword and sorcery series, but none of them ever appeared in Weird Tales. Leiber did eventually sell several stories to Weird Tales, beginning with "The Automatic Pistol", which appeared in May 1940.^[96][101]

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