Bertha Russell (ca. 1910-?)

Young Author
Born Circa 1910
Died ?

There is an extra story in the November 1925 issue of Weird Tales. It's not listed in the table of contents, and its author is not included with others who contributed to "The Unique Magazine." Her name was Bertha Russell and she was fifteen years old when her story was published. Editor Farnsworth Wright took the unusual step of publishing her story, entitled "Pity Me!", in its entirety not in the main body of the magazine but in "The Eyrie," the regular letters column. I have seen poetry in "The Eyrie" before, but this is the first time I have seen a short story.

"Pity Me!" is brief. Call it a short short story. It's in a necrophilic vein--pun partially intended. There were readers who liked and wanted stories of what they called necrophilia. There were others who did not. I don't think stories in this vein that appeared in Weird Tales were always sexual. I think when readers wrote about "necrophilia," they meant stories that were focused on death and corpses, maybe also stories that were especially gruesome. One of the first, if not the first, necrophilic story in Weird Tales was "The Loved Dead" by C.M. Eddy, Jr., assisted or revised by H.P. Lovecraft and published in the issue of May/June/July 1924. That story was supposed to have caused a wider controversy regarding pulp magazines. I'm not sure that that actually happened. Anyway, maybe what's needed here is some further research and a whole series devoted to stories of this type. But does anybody really want to read them?

We don't know anything about Bertha Russell except that she was fifteen years old in 1925, making her birth year about 1910 and making her yet another teen-aged author in Weird Tales. Usually "The Eyrie" included the city from which a correspondent wrote, but we don't have that for her. Suffice it to say that young Bertha Russell must have been thrilled and excited to have her story in Weird Tales.

Like I said, I have seen poetry in "The Eyrie." I have also seen it as an epigraph in various short stories. A list or discussion of poetry or lines of poetry that appeared in "The Eyrie" or stories published in Weird Tales would make for another essay or series. It would also make for an expanded list of authors whose work appeared in "The Unique Magazine."

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley