Weird Tales: The First Anniversary

I wrote last year and have been writing this year about Weird Tales in its first thirteen issues, published from March 1923 to May/June/July 1924. This baker's dozen can be taken together because all were published by The Rural Publishing Corporation under its co-founders, J.C. Henneberger and J.M. Lansinger, with Edwin Baird serving as editor, at least, as far as we know, for the first twelve issues. There are similarities among formats and aesthetics in these thirteen issues, even if they can be broken down into smaller categories. I just finished writing about one of these categories, the three Houdini issues of March, April, and May/June/July 1924. Weird Tales was a different magazine after it returned in November 1924.

The March 1924 issue of Weird Tales was its actual first-anniversary issue, but as far as I can tell, that event went observed for another two months, until the quarterly issue of May/June/July 1924. Even then, the observance, consisting of two words, "Anniversary Number," was only on the cover. The great length of the anniversary number, 196 interior pages, would also seem to have been a celebration, while inside was an essay called "Why Weird Tales?", written anonymously by Otis Adelbert Kline. Although its appearance wasn't explicitly on the occasion of the first anniversary of the magazine, Kline's essay seems to me simultaneously a celebration, a mission statement, a manifesto, and a dedication to the future of weird fiction.

Unfortunately, that future seemed short, for Weird Tales disappeared for the three months following the anniversary number. Fortunately it came back in November 1924 and lasted until September 1954 . . .

. . . in its first incarnation. Since then, Weird Tales has come and gone. Sometimes it has been around for its own anniversaries and sometimes not. I would like to go through them, year by year, or five years by five years, or whenever they occurred, culminating in the 100-year-anniversary issue of 2023.

Weird Tales, The Unique Magazine, in its anniversary number of May/June/July 1924, one hundred years ago this month. The cover story is "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," written under the byline of Houdini but ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft. The magazine took note of its anniversary on its own cover. The blurb after that--"Fifty Distinct Feature Novels, Short Stories and Novelettes"--isn't quite accurate. But there were thrills, mystery, and adventure to be sure, hopefully enough for three (or six, as it would turn out) month's reading. The cover art was by R.M. Mally, now known to have been George W. Mally and his wife Ruth M. Mally. Or maybe R.M. Mally was Ruth alone.

Text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley