Weird Tales, July/August 1923

The issue of Weird Tales magazine for July/August 1923 was the first to cover two months rather than one and the first to have fewer than 100 pages. It was also the first issue in volume two of the magazine. The cover by R.M. Mally illustrates "Sunfire" by Francis Stevens, aka Gertrude Barrows Bennett. It was his second of nine covers for Weird Tales, and it was her first and last story for "The Unique Magazine." In fact, it was the last published story of her writing career: one hundred years ago this late summer season, Gertrude Barrows Bennett fell silent.

There are sixteen stories, one credited essay, and two poems in the July/August issue. The poems were by Clark Ashton Smith and were the first of their form in Weird Tales. All of the interior illustrations were by William F. Heitman (1878-1945). There are sixteen uncredited nonfiction fillers with titles in this issue as well, plus at least three without titles. And there are two features, "The Cauldron," conducted by Preston Langley Hickey, and "The Eyrie," the regular letters column. As in the previous two issues, there are three columns of type. The interior of the magazine contains 96 pages.

The stories, essay, and poems and their authors:

• "Sunfire," part one of a two-part serial by Francis Stevens (1883-1948).

• "The Outcasts" by George Warburton Lewis (1878-1963).

• "The Room of the Black Velvet Drapes" by B. W. Sliney.

• "Doctor X," called "A Five-Minute Tale," by Culpeper Chunn (1889-1927). I wonder what the first story was in which someone or something was referred to as X. Could it have been "Doctor X"?

• "The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other" by Valma Clark (1894-1953). The title of this story is of course a variation on "The Man Who . . .".

• "The Strange Case of Jacob Arum" by John Harris Burland (1870-1926). I believe Heitman's illustration for Burland's story is the first in Weird Tales to show a black man.

• "Black Cunjer" by Isabel Walker.

• "The Red Moon," poem by Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961).

• "Shades" by Bryan Irvine (1885-1945).

• "Voodooism" essay by Will W. Nelson.

• "Senorita Serpente" by Earl Wayland Bowman (1875-1952).

• "The Room in the Tower" by D. L. Radway.

• "Riders in the Dark" by Vincent Starrett (1886-1974).

• "Mandrake" by Adam Hull Shirk (1881-1931).

• "The Garden of Evil," poem by Clark Ashton Smith.

• "People vs. Bland" by Theodore Snow Wood (1877-1940).

• "The Evening Wolves," part two of a two-part serial by Paul Ellsworth Triem (1882-1946).

• "The Corpse on the Third Slab" by Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946). Kline's story, set once again in Chicago, has an Irish beat cop named Ryan, as well as a character called Coroner Haynes, who would show up again in Kline's Dr. Dorp story "The Malignant Entity" in the issue of May/June/July 1924.

• "The Guard of Honor" by J. Paul Suter (1884-1970).

I have written before about nine of these authors, seven at length and two with much shorter entries. Click on their names for links.

Next: "The Eyrie" for July/August 1923.

Weird Tales, August/September 1923 with cover art by R.M. Mally illustrating "Sunfire" by Francis Stevens. I have read "Sunfire," and I can't figure out which scene in the story is illustrated in Mally's drawing. I would call this one of the poorest covers in Weird Tales, a magazine with more than its share of poor covers.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley