Weird Tales, September 1923

Weird Tales for September 1923 contains 96 pages in its interior, sixteen stories in all, plus one credited essays and six uncredited nonfiction fillers, plus "The Eyrie" and "The Cauldron." (The fillers are few enough in number that I will list them below.) The cover art was by R.M. Mally again, while the interior illustrations were all by William F. Heitman. There was a new main title logo in that September issue. I think it interesting and very well done. The main title looks somewhat old-fashioned, like the Spencerian script of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The subtitle, "The Unique Magazine," is in what I would call an Art Deco style, a decidedly twentieth-century style made for the machine age. The juxtaposition of old and new seems just right for Weird Tales.

The stories and essays in Weird Tales, Volume II, Number 2:

• "The People of the Comet," part one of a two-part serial by Austin Hall (1880-1933). Was this the first interplanetary adventure in Weird Tales? I think so.

• "The Black Patch" by Julian Kilman (1878-1954).

• "The Soul of Peter Andrus" by Hubert La Due (1891-1946).

• "The Case of Dr. Johnstone" by Burton Peter Thom (1874-1933).

• "The Dead-Naming of Lukapehu" by P. D. Gog, pen name of Charles Edward Lauterbach (1884-1962). Gog's story is set in Hawaii. Dead-naming had a different meaning then than it does now.

• "The Cup of Blood" by Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946).

• "Black Magic" (1860) essay by Eliphas Levi aka Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875); translated from Historie de la Magie by C.P. Oliver. Oliver also had a story in Detective Tales, "The Body in the Cask" in September 1923, and a column, "Enigmas of Crime," in the same magazine in October 1923 and February 1924.

• "The Devil's Cabin" by Vance Hoyt (1889-1967), who had had a letter in the April 1923 issue of Weird Tales.

• "After Reading 'The Devil's Cabin'," a letter by Rupert Hughes (1872-1956) to Vance Hoyt. Evidently, Hughes had read Hoyt's story in manuscript form. That makes me wonder, was he a literary agent? A reader of manuscripts for Weird Tales? We should look into this more. And I guess he should be added to the list of authors in Weird Tales.

• "The Old Burying Ground" by Edgar Lloyd Hampton (1872-1951).

• "Sisters Prefer Death to Charity" essay (non-fiction filler) by uncredited.

• "Female Buddha Slain" essay (non-fiction filler) by uncredited.

• "Sunfire," part two of a two-part serial by Francis Stevens, aka Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883-1948).

• "The Gorilla" by Horatio Vernon Ellis (dates uncertain). Another gorilla story.

• "The Talisman" a true story by Nadia Lavrova (1897-1989).

• "The Autobiography of a Blue Ghost" by Don Mark Lemon (1877-1961).

• "The Damned Thing" (1893) by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?).

• "Rare Animals Discovered on Dipsomania Isle" essay (non-fiction filler) by uncredited.

• "The Teak-Wood Shrine" by Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940).

• "The Money Lender," a "Five-Minute Yarn" by Vincent Starrett (1886-1974).

• "The Bloodstained Parasol" by James Ravenscroft, presumably James Ravenscroft of Florida (1873-?).

Weird Tales, September 1923, with cover art credited to R.M. Mally. 

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley