Who Was the Editor of the First-Anniversary Number of Weird Tales?

In the previous entry, I went back in time to January 30 of this year. Now I'm going even further back to almost the beginning of 2024, to an entry of January 6. That entry is entitled "Weird Tales in the First Year (and More)." A question came up in that entry, namely: Who was the editor of the first-anniversary number of Weird Tales? Some comments went back and forth. I can't say that we have a definitive answer. I'm not sure there will ever be a definitive answer. But I would like to summarize what we know.

First: Edwin Baird edited Weird Tales from its inception until, presumably, April 1924 (or maybe only March). There isn't any editor credited in that issue, nor in the issues preceding or following it. Baird was also the editor of Detective Tales, a companion title to Weird Tales and one that preceded it in print, beginning with a first issue on October 1, 1922.

In the spring of 1924, The Rural Publishing Corporation, publisher of both Weird Tales and Detective Tales, was in financial trouble. Co-founded by Jacob C. Henneberger and John M. Lansinger, The Rural Publishing Corporation came to an end with the first-anniversary number of Weird Tales of May/June/July 1924. Baird went with Lansinger and Detective Tales. That left Henneberger with Weird Tales--and no editor.

In my entry of January 6, I called the anniversary number "jumbo-sized" and a "triple issue." It was actually neither. That number, or issue as we say now, had the same number of pages as the first two issues of the magazine, 196 in each. So it wasn't jumbo-sized exactly, although that's still a lot of pages. Also, it wasn't a triple issue, even if it covered a three-month period. In fact, the May/June/July issue of 1924 was a stated quarterly issue, the first and as far as I know only quarterly issue during the first run of the magazine, i.e., from 1923 to 1954. By the way, Edwin Baird died in September 1954, which was when the last issue of Weird Tales came out. I might call that weird, or an instance of the workings of Weird.

So who was the editor of the first-anniversary number of Weird Tales?

Well, in The Weird Tales Story (1977), author Robert Weinberg wrote, without citation: "Otis Adelbert Kline and Farnsworth Wright put together one gigantic issue," i.e., the first-year anniversary issue. (p. 4)

In The Thing's Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales (2018), author John Locke went into more detail, quoting, first, Kline, who claimed editorship of the issue in a letter to Robert E. Howard's father, dated 1941; and, second, quoting Henneberger, who wrote in 1924 that Baird was the editor until the last issue, i.e., the first-anniversary issue. According to Mr. Locke, Wright had also served as an uncredited editor since April 1924. He wrote: "Wright was the actual editor of the issue in its early stages of preparation [. . .]." Wright quit the company in anger, though, at which point, "Kline was recruited as temporary editor [. . .]." (p. 168) John Locke's conclusion: "all three individuals [Baird, Wright, and Kline] edited the issue!" (p. 168)

Biographer, essayist, book reviewer, and encyclopedist Phil Stephenson-Payne left comments under my entry of January 6, 2024. He had credited Edwin Baird as editor of the first-anniversary number in his online source, The FictionMags Index. (Forget what I have done in this blog. Mr. Stephenson-Payne has done far more in his career.) He quoted an article written by Robert Weinberg and published in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines (Greenwood Press, 1985) as follows: that the first-anniversary number was "assembled by Jacob Henneberger and Otis A. Kline from dummies assembled by Baird." After consulting with Mike Ashley and John (presumably) Locke, he left a comment quoting John, as follows:

The short version is that Baird initiated work on the Ann[iversary] Issue in the midst of the "reorganization," which was editorial until the financial axe fell. Mid-course, Baird was pulled off of W[eird] T[ales] to devote his exclusive time to Detective Tales. Wright came in as a part-time interim editor for WT (while J[acob] C[lark] H[enneberger] unsuccessfully tried to recruit [H.P.] Lovecraft). Wright found out about the many debts to contributors, couldn't get any resolution from JCH, and stormed out in protest with the Ann[iversary] Issue unfinished. JCH got Kline to get it out the door. It's fair to say that the issue was edited by Baird, Wright, and Kline, in that order. I don't think it follows that any two of them worked together as co-editors. (Italics and boldface added.)

That sounds like a good and reasonable answer to the question: first Baird, then Wright, and finally Kline had a hand in editing the first-anniversary number, all or some with an assist from Henneberger. Lovecraft famously declined the editorship of the magazine at around that time. What a different world it would have been if he hadn't! In any case, the May/June/July 1924 issue of Weird Tales was the last for several months. Like a revenant, though, it came back in November 1924, then and for the next fifteen and a half years edited by Farnsworth Wright.

Thank you to Phil Stephenson-Payne, Mike Ashley, and John Locke for their information and clarifications. Thanks also to the late Robert Weinberg.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley. Text and comments by John Locke and Phil Stephenson-Payne are their own property.