Laura O. Tuck (1901-1952)

Teacher, Newspaper Columnist, Amateur Singer, Violinist, & Stage Actress, Housewife & Mother, Factory Worker

Born October 14, 1901, Lincoln, Nebraska
Died April 25, 1952, Los Angeles city or county, California

Laura Opal Tuck was born on October 14, 1901, in Lincoln, Nebraska, to William Henry Tuck, a veterinarian, and Catherine (Cresse) Tuck. Laura O. Tuck attended schools in Seward, Sutton, and Weeping Water, Nebraska. She graduated from Weeping Water High School in May 1921, but not before playing on the girl's basketball team, acting in her class play, and reporting on school news for the Weeping Water Republican. She attended summer school at the Nebraska State Normal School, now Peru State College, in Peru, Nebraska, and began teaching primary school in 1921. Laura taught in Comstock and Walton, also near Murdock and Greenwood, all in eastern Nebraska. In 1927, she married Oria Elroy Spelman in Lancaster County, Nebraska. He was an automobile mechanic and carpenter. The couple were in California by 1930 or 1931. They had three children together, one of whom died at birth.

Laura was an amateur singer, violinist, and stage actress. She performed in her class play at Weeping Water High School and in a play called "Neighbors" at Chadderdon's Hall, Weeping Water, on July 27 and 28, 1922. Her travels and activities were well documented in her hometown paper. Her young life must have been an exciting one. There were hazards, too, a quarantine for smallpox, travel by car and train through the aftermath of a blizzard in order to reach the schoolhouse. An online photograph of her shows a pretty young woman with a mass of dark hair. I have a feeling she was well loved in her hometown.

Laura O. Tuck wrote a single letter published in Weird Tales. It appeared in September 1925, one hundred years ago this month:

Laura O. Tuck, of Weeping Water, Nebraska, writes: "I would suggest that you reprint some of Francis Marion Crawford's stories, for instance Man Overboard, The Upper Berth and The Screaming Skull. By pure accident I ran across WEIRD TALES last January: it is just what I have been looking for for years. I have looked in vain for this [sic] kind of stories in other magazines and digging in odd corners of libraries, but now I know just where to go to get 'my' kind of stories. Please let us have more stories like The Lure of Atlantis [by Joel Martin Nichols] (in last April's WEIRD TALES), which is my favorite of all the stories I have read so far." [Boldface added.]

We can only imagine the lives of those who came before us, of people who lived in places far-flung from the big cities of the East and Midwest. Weeping Water is still like a tiny island in a sea of farm fields. In letters sent to "The Eyrie," we can read about the joy and pleasure of these people at discovering and reading Weird Tales. We can imagine what it must have been like for them finally to find what Laura O. Tuck called "'my' kind of stories."

Laura Spelman went far from her home in the late 1920s or early 1930s. In later years, she worked in a pottery factory in California. I think she deserved better than what she got in life, but then that's so very often true on this earth, in this vale of tears. She died young, too young, on April 25, 1952, in Los Angeles city or county.

Laura O. Tuck's Letter in Weird Tales

• September 1925

(By the way, the name Weeping Water echoes ideas I wrote about recently about the pseudonymous author Adrian Pordelorrar. Strange coincidence.)

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

George T. Spillman (1909-1964)

Author, Telegrapher, Newspaper Writer & Editor, Champion Bridge Player
Born June 15, 1909, Vendor, Arkansas
Died February 11, 1964, at home, Shadyside, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

George Thornfern Spillman was born on June 15, 1909, to John J. Spillman, a schoolteacher, and Julia Maude (Davis) Spillman, a housewife. He had two brothers, Jerome Spillman and James Spillman, and a sister, Julia Spillman, later Julia Herndon. 

George T. Spillman wrote to Weird Tales as a fifteen-year-old in 1925. His letter was published in the August 1925 issue, one hundred years ago last month. He followed that up with a short story, "Retribution," published in December 1925, and a second letter published in January 1925. Those are his lone credits listed in either The FictionMags Index or the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

Spillman graduated from Roosevelt High School in Kent, Ohio, and attended Brown University. He worked as a telegrapher for Western Union from 1926 to 1952. In 1952, he went to work for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He was employed there for twelve years, 1952 to 1964, as a copy editor and makeup editor. He also wrote articles on bridge for the Post-Gazette and was recognized as one of the best bridge players in Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh area. In 1955, he achieved the rank of Life Master in the American Contract Bridge League. His career was interrupted by service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He enlisted on June 21, 1941, as a private and was stationed at Camp Warrenton, Virginia. He served two years in East Africa and was discharged in 1946 as a captain.

Here is an excerpt from "The Eyrie" from August 1925:

George T. Spillman, of Kent, Ohio, put WEIRD TALES to practical use recently. He is fifteen years old and a senior in high school. "Last week I gave a talk on reincarnation before my classes which astounded the entire high school," he writes. "Ha! most of my information for that talk was gleaned from your story, Under the N-Ray, by Will Smith and R. J. Robbins. That's the kind of story I like; let's have more of them. Your page of contents is a veritable Hall of Fame. I have read nearly every magazine on the market, but none is half as high in my esteem as WEIRD TALES, not only because I am a lover of the bizarre, but also for the masterly style the authors employ in the stories you choose. It is not only the most interesting pastime I can imagine, but it is also an education to read your magazine. Many of the authors whose names you are displaying will go down the pages of literary history on a par with Poe. Your ghost stories and your werewolves are so convincing that I almost think I believe in both." [Boldface added.]

"Retribution" is a very brief tale; the table of contents in that December 1925 issue calls it a "two-minute tale." It ends in suicide.

Spillman wrote his first letter from Kent, Ohio. His second came from Providence, Rhode Island. He was only fifteen years old and a senior in high school when he wrote his first. The second must have come after he had matriculated at Brown University. H.P. Lovecraft lived in New York City in 1925-1926; I guess that means Spillman missed being in close proximity to Lovecraft during his brief tenure at the university. In 1926, he went to work as a telegraph operator, though I don't know where. It's nice to think that Spillman and Lovecraft met somehow, but maybe it never happened.

George T. Spillman died at home, in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, on February 11, 1964. His cause of death was barbiturate poisoning: he had overdosed on Tuinal. A sad end. Spillman was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Boardman Township, Mahoning County, Ohio.

George T. Spillman's Story & Letters in Weird Tales
Letter to "The Eyrie" (Aug. 1925) 
"Retribution" (Dec. 1925)
Letter to "The Eyrie" (Jan. 1926)

 

Further Reading 

"Bridge Expert, Newsman Dies Here" in the Pittsburgh Press, February 12, 1964, page 33.
"G.T. Spillman, P-G Makeup Editor, Dies" in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Feb. 12, 1964, page 6.

 

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

R.G. Macready (1905-1977)-Part Two

R.G. Macready contributed to student publications at all of the schools he attended. He also contributed to the Volta Review, a publication for the deaf and hard of hearing that is still being published today. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 1945, he went to work as a teacher of English, history, and journalism at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf. He planned to write in his spare time.

Macready contributed just one story to Weird Tales. Entitled "The Plant Thing," it was published in July 1925 when its author was just twenty years old. "The Plant Thing" is a brief tale of a large, carnivorous plant, bred by a scientist who lives in a walled estate with his daughter and a Malay servant. The narrator of the story is a newspaper reporter. "The Plant Thing" has similarities to "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud (Weird Tales, Mar. 1923), as well as to "The Hand" by Guy de Maupassant (1883). Stories of murderous or carnivorous plants are common in weird fiction, horror fiction, and science fiction. I have written before about plants like these that appeared on the cover of Weird Tales. Click here to find your way. And of course there is in "The Plant Thing" the scientist and his beautiful daughter, with his wife and her mother nowhere to be found. Women in popular culture should know better than to marry scientists and to give them beautiful daughters. They're likely to end up like Dr. Morbius' wife in Forbidden Planet (1956) or Dr. Medford's wife in Them! (1957).

"The Plant Thing" has been reprinted several times since its original publication, as early as 1925 in Not at Night, edited by Christine Campbell Thomson, and as late as 2022. In a newspaper article from 1946 ("Deaf Man Receives M.A. in Journalism," in The Deaf Mississippian, Feb. 1, 1946, p. 1), Macready was described as having written "two horror novels and numerous short stories and novelettes, as yet unsold." I wish that these novels and stories were still in existence, but I fear they have been lost, for Macready never married and died without issue. He was survived only by two brothers and several nieces and nephews.

Macready had two letters in "The Eyrie." Here is the text of his first, from June 1925:

You are to be commended on the determined stand you, as well as the great majority of WEIRD TALES readers, have taken against those who protest at the weird quality of the stories printed in your periodical. Why do not these people, who are trying to wipe out of existence the only magazine of its kind, turn their artillery upon the sex-exploiting magazines that are crowding the best magazines out of place on our news stands? Anyway, a mind that can go undiseased through that so-called literature should be able to survive the pleasantly exhilarating 'kick' of a good horror tale. There can be no question as to the literary status of WEIRD TALES. In it have appeared stories worthy of Kipling himself, to say nothing of Poe.

Macready worked as telegraph editor at the Galveston Daily News in 1948 and at the Big Spring Daily Herald in 1949 and after. I don't have anything on his career after 1950. Reginald G. Macready died on May 10, 1977, in Arlington, Texas, at age seventy-two and was buried at Southland Memorial Park in Grand Prairie, Texas.

R.G. Macready's Story & Letters in Weird Tales
Letter to "The Eyrie" (June 1925)
"The Plant Thing" (July 1925)
Letter to "The Eyrie" (July 1925)

Further Reading

Many interesting and detailed newspaper articles about him and his career as a student and journalist. You might start at the website of the Oklahoma Historical Society and its archive of newspapers.

 Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Junius B. Smith (1883-1945)

Author, Magazine Columnist, Stenographer, Attorney, Poultry Farmer, Builder and Contractor
Born  September 29, 1883, Salt Lake City, Utah Territory
Died  April 3, 1945, Mapleton, Utah

Junius Bailey Smith was born on September 29, 1883, in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. I believe he is the first native-born Utahan I have written about in this blog and the first Mormon. His father was Samuel Harrison Bailey Smith (1838-1914), born two days before Mormons were driven from Nauvoo, Illinois, and carried thirty miles in a snowstorm to a place of refuge. Samuel H.B. Smith was a son of Samuel Harrison Smith (1808-1844) and a grand-nephew of Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844), founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Junius B. Smith's mother was Mary Catherine (Bailey) Smith (1842-1916). He had nineteen siblings and half-siblings. Smith was married at least three times. His daughter Mary Kay Smith was also a writer and won an award from Seventeen magazine for her poetry.

Junius B. Smith attended school in Salt Lake City and studied law at the University of Utah. He was admitted to the bar on April 9, 1914, and practiced law until 1939. He was the author of dozens of stories published in fiction magazines from 1910 to 1936 and by his own estimate 8,000,000 words in all. Titles included All-Story Weekly, The Argosy, Breezy Stories, The Cavalier, Hot Stories, Love Story Magazine, Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, Thrilling Western, Top Notch Magazine, and of course Weird Tales. According to one obituary (below), he was a columnist for Street & Smith magazines.

Bailey is best known and had real success with his stories of the occult detective Prince Abdul Omar of Persia, better known as Semi-Dual. The first of these was "The Occult Detector," part one of which was published in The Cavalier on February 17, 1912. Smith collaborated with another teller of weird tales, J.U. Giesy (1877-1947), on the Semi-Dual stories and on other stories, too, including their serial "Ebenezer's Casket," which appeared in Weird Tales in April-May/June/July 1924. (The two earned mention in the June 7, 1924, Deseret News for their efforts [p. 7].) Smith also wrote two stories and a letter published in Weird Tales. One of these was of "The Man Who . . ." type. Following is the text of Smith's lone letter to "The Eyrie":

Junius B. Smith, author of An Arc of Direction in the June issue, writes: "I wish to congratulate you on the perfect typesetting of this story. It so frequently happens in all-fiction magazines that errors creep in which mutilate the story, that it is a pleasure to find a story set so well that not even a minor defect greets the eye as it is read. I think the magazine is improving in appearance all the time. The cover on the June number easily catches the eye of one interested in things that are weird."

After his retirement, Smith lived in Springville, Utah, and on a ranch in Hobble Creek Canyon before moving to Mapleton, Utah. Junius B. Smith died on April 3, 1945, in Mapleton, and was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery. He was just sixty-one years old. By the way, Smith was a champion checker player.

Junius B. Smith's Stories & Letter in Weird Tales
"Ebenezer's Casket" with J.U. Giesy (two-part serial, Apr.-May/June/July 1924)
"The Man Who Dared to Know" (Apr. 1924)
"An Arc of Direction" (June 1925)
Letter to "The Eyrie" (Aug. 1925)

 

Further Reading

• "Our Home Writers" in The Deseret News, June 19, 1926, section 3, page VI.
• "In Our Town . . . Junius Smith" in the Springville (Utah) Herald, June 1, 1944, page 1+.
• Numerous obituaries and other articles.

From the Salt Lake Tribune, April 5, 1945, page 9.

Correction (Aug. 18, 2025): Thanks to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database for pointing out that when Smith was born, Utah was still a territory. I have made the correction.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Anne Forman Ellis (1893-1946)

Travel Writer, Tourist/Traveler, Secretary
Born December 18, 1893, Carrollton, Kentucky
Died June 22, 1946, Leigh Memorial Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia

Anne Elizabeth Forman Ellis was born on December 18, 1893, in Carrolton, Kentucky to Alfred Soward Forman and Jennie Wilson Forman. She was a traveler and tourist who had just one letter in Weird Tales, published one hundred years ago this month. Here it is in its entirety, with an editorial introduction:

This is very gratifying, but sh! not too loud, or we may get some hard knocks. But no; the next letter is even more enthusiastic. It is from Anne Forman Ellis, of Norfolk, Virginia, who writes: "Doubtless many of your readers have perused their recent copies of WEIRD TALES under more difficult conditions or in stranger surroundings or at points farther away than I, but I think that for anyone not a professional traveler I may claim the palm for long-distance commuting in my reading, for I read part of the May-June-July quarterly while on my way from Norfolk to California in July, the rest of it on my return trip a week later, the November number while on my way out again in October, the December number as I returned this month--a total of some 14,500 miles to the three copies. To me the apotheosis of comfort and content is the Pullman berth with its drawn curtains shutting out the world, the lulling rock of the fast train, a box of carefully selected chocolates AND a copy of the newest WEIRD TALES with its delightful shudders."

I'm not sure that I have ever read a better or more fun account of someone reading and enjoying Weird Tales than this. What any of us wouldn't give to be there again in those years, riding a train across America!

Anne Forman Ellis lived in Norfolk, Virginia, for thirty years. She was secretary of Mutual Federal Savings & Loan Association, and before that of the Tidewater Automobile Association. She traveled throughout the United States and wrote on historic and scenic sites in Virginia. She was married to and divorced from (in 1926) Carleton Bliss Ellis. Despite his name, there does not appear to have been any bliss in their marriage, for she sued him for desertion and their time together (and apart) lasted just three years and four months. Despite that, she kept his name and the title Mrs. She died on June 22, 1946, at Leigh Memorial Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. She was just fifty-two years old. Luckily we have her letter.

Anne Forman Ellis' Letter to "The Eyrie"

March 1925

Further Reading
"Mrs. Anne Forman Ellis" (obituary), The Portsmouth (Virginia) Star June 24, 1946, page 8; other obituaries and newspaper items, too.

Anne Forman Ellis (1893-1946)

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Bessie Douglas of Portland, Maine

The January 1925 issue of Weird Tales includes eight letters to the editor, these published in "The Eyrie." We should realize that a "letter" in Weird Tales wasn't necessarily a whole letter. Few writers had the privilege of having a whole letter printed in "The Eyrie." Far more often, a "letter" was an excerpt, sometimes long, more often short, but almost certainly not the whole thing.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists seven writers of letters in that January issue of one hundred years ago. The missing name is that of Bessie Douglas of Portland, Maine. There is an extremely spare passage from her letter in "The Eyrie" of one hundred years ago. It's embedded in a paragraph regarding the type of story Weird Tales should publish:

     Up to date, those who want horror stories have distinctly the advantage, but many of them qualify their demand for thrillers by saying that the horror stories must not be disgusting. Some of our readers want the magazine to drip with gore ("the scarier they are, the better I like them," writes Bessie Douglas, of Portland, Maine); but these are in a small minority. As near as the editor can make out from the expression of opinion so far received, the readers of Weird Tales don't want anything nauseating, and yet they do want to read eery, thrilling and bizarre tales of the Edgar Allan Poe type--tales such as they cannot get in any other magazine. But the question is still open. Weird Tales belongs to you, the readers, and your opinions will be eagerly welcomed. [Boldface added.]

Women can be hard to find in public records and old newspapers, but I found a Miss Bessie Douglas of Portland, Maine, a seamstress and possibly a singer or musician. We might not know her identity, but we can at least add Bessie Douglas' name to the list of people who wrote to "The Eyrie."

By the way, did you notice what Farnsworth Wright wrote?

"Weird Tales belongs to you, the readers [. . .] ."

I wish that were still true.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Reactions to "Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas

"Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas (Mark R. Harrington) was the cover story for the November 1924 issue of Weird Tales. The issue of January 1925 was the first in which readers had a chance to respond to that issue and its stories. Before printing their responses in the revived letters column, called "The Eyrie," the new editor, Farnsworth Wright, provided some answers to his question about what kind of stories Weird Tales should print. Should they be horror stories or something else? The readers would have their say.

Reader W.S. Charles of Pendleton, Oregon, wrote: "I herewith put in my oar against 'horror stories,' particularly that class that are somber and in the main vicious, beyond the realm of reason." By "beyond the realm of reason," I think he meant "unreasonably" or "extremely." Too bad W.S. Charles and people like him (or her) are not around today to make their demands. I think we would have better and more enjoyable stories, as well as a higher level of art and accomplishment in weird fiction, if they were. Instead we have writers indulging in their sickness for the sake of themselves, their sick friends, and their sick readers.

Farnsworth Wright took the measure of the readers in 1924-1925, responding:

Well, readers, we are going to keep the magazine weird, but NOT disgusting. The votes for the necrophilic tales were so few that we are satisfied you want us to keep the magazine clean. Stories of the [Edgar Allan] Poe type -- scary stories -- spooky stories -- mystic and occult fiction -- thrilling mysteries -- bizarre crime stories -- all these will find place in Weird Tales, but those of you who want tales of blood-drinking and cannibalism will have to make your opinion register a great deal more strongly than you have yet done before we let down the bars to this type of stories [sic]. We repeat here what we have said before: Weird Tales belongs to you, the readers, and we will be guided by your wishes.

That last part bears repeating (and condensing):

Weird Tales belongs to the readers.

Authors, editors, publishers, and critics of today would never allow that, though. Never. For to allow Weird Tales and weird fiction in general to belong to the readers would make of all of this a democratic instead of an elitist thing. They would have to give up control and open up their clique. And as we have seen in election after election, democracy is intolerable to self-anointed elites, for if the people are allowed their say, they will inevitably choose things the elites must hate.

* * *

Also in November 1924, Farnsworth Wright instituted a voting process among readers for their favorite stories in every issue. The first winner was "The Brain in the Jar" by Norman Elwood Hammerstrom (Hamerstrom). Second place went to "Teoquitla the Golden." In the issue of January 1925, Lieutenant Arthur J. Burks wrote to say: "Ramón de las Cuevas is a writing hombre." (Sometimes the accent mark went one way and sometimes the other.) I like that compliment. Having served in the Caribbean, Burks recognized the meaning behind the pseudonym, continuing: "Also keep 'Ramón of the Caves' busy--he knows his stuff! His description of the old beggar woman took me bodily back to the West Indies. In any case my vote for the best story goes to him." In the March 1925 issue, Cecil Fuller of Tulare, California, asked for a second story by Ramón de las Cuevas. Alas, this was not to be.

In its May issue of 1925, Weird Tales observed (obliquely) its second anniversary. Among the letters in "The Eyrie" was one from an anonymous correspondent in Moscow, Idaho, in which he criticized what he termed "impossibilities":

"Just one instance: Teoquitla the Golden was very clever and entertaining, but the permutation of sex described is a biological impossibility. Let me qualify that. Sex has apparently been changed experimentally in certain lower animals; varying degrees of change from female to male are known to take place in cattle (the freemartin phenomenon), and possibly may also occur in other mammals. But the important point is this: such changes can only take place during the embryonic stage of development. After that, they are impossible. Any biologist will tell you that. Of course, fiction of the weird sort is not intended to stick to scientific facts, although realism in any story will be enhanced if the scientific basis is properly regarded. Still, Teoquitla the Golden was clever."

What was true at the beginning of time was also true in 1924 and is still true today: sex in human beings cannot be changed from one to the other. (Yes, there are only two.) A man cannot be a woman and a woman cannot be a man. There are those of us who like to think of history as being a positive progression and people of the past as being primitive, while we are naturally more advanced. But at least in 1924, someone in small-town Idaho knew and wrote the truth. He could have been a grade school dropout, a factory worker, farmhand, or common laborer, and he would still have been smarter and more sensible than so many people of today, including politicians, pundits, commentators, physicians, surgeons, teachers, librarians, college professors and administrators, journalists, authors, artists, and people in entertainment, sports, and the media. The worst of them are vicious, hateful, violent, aggressive, destructive. They wish to carry out--and do--the kind of necrophilic and cannibalistic horrors that readers in 1924 objected to. Worse yet, they wish to do these things to children. And the best of them? Dupes--people too weak in will and in the mind to think for themselves or to stand up for the truth. They are people who have fallen for lies, believe lies, and tell lies, even if it means women and children are harmed in the process. And they're always so sure they're smarter and better than those of us who speak and act on the truth. They are always so sure they're morally and intellectually superior to us. Shame on them all. If there are forces in history, surely the most powerful of these is divine in its origins. This force is expressed directly through truth, fact, unalterable reality, and immutable law, and their most horrible ideas will surely fall before it.

* * *

One thing the anonymous letter-writer here might have missed by a little is that weird fiction need not be scientific, for weird fiction is the fiction of weird. Science fiction is the fiction of science. In reading weird fiction, we seek a departure from strict realism and into weird realms. The whole point in "Teoquitla the Golden" is that it's a story in which Weird has her way. A man who was a hater of a woman meets his weird in being transformed into and living as a woman.

In looking for a candidate writer of that letter in Weird Tales regarding Teoquitla and science, I have come upon Dr. Carl DeWitt Garby (1890 or 1892-1928), lifelong friend of then unpublished but soon-to-be renowned science fiction author E.E. "Doc" Smith (1890-1965). Smith and Garby were roommates at the University of Idaho in Moscow. Both graduated in 1914. Like Smith, Garby was a fan of science fiction. Garby's wife, Lee Hawkins Garby (1890-1957), was, too. She collaborated with Doc Smith on his famed serial, then novel, The Skylark of Space (1928). All three lived and worked in Washington, D.C. Poor Dr. Garby died while quite young, presumably in that city. I can't say that Dr. Garby was the author of that letter to "The Eyrie"--I don't know about the timeline exactly. Could he have been in Moscow in 1924? Or could his friend Doc Smith have been the writer? The world, I guess, will never know.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales: The Thirtieth Anniversary

In its March issue of 1953, Weird Tales magazine printed a letter from Irving Glassman of Brooklyn, New York, in observance of the thirtieth anniversary of the magazine. Glassman had one other letter in Weird Tales. That one was printed in the May 1952 issue and reprinted in H.P. Lovecraft in "The Eyrie", edited by S.T. Joshi and Marc A. Michaud (1979). Glassman referred to H.P. Lovecraft in his first letter and made an oblique reference to Lovecraft in his second:

The Editor, WEIRD TALES

9 Rockefeller Plaza, New York 20, N. Y.

My calendar informs me that with the next issue WEIRD TALES celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. I would like to be among those who offer their congratulations to the most long-lived of all imaginative magazines.

I, myself, am too young to have read those early issues of The Unique Magazine but I have read many of those stories in later editions of WT as well as in the Arkham House books. I have in my library a copy of The Moon Terror which, I believe, was the first anthology of stories taken exclusively from your magazine. The Moon Terror is something of a rara avis today and I'm quite proud to own that book.

It would be fitting on this occasion to present a list of what I consider to be the ten best stories to have appeared in WT but such a task, I find, is impossible. At least 50 outstanding phantasies come to mind and there are more than that number which are equally good but which have, for the moment, escaped my memory. For every poorly-written tale that is printed in WT (and that only proves that the editor is human, after all) there are at least a dozen readable ones and of that dozen you will find that about half of them are potential classics. This is not merely my opinion; it is shared by all the readers of your Unique Magazine. Please keep up the good work.

Every best wish to you.

Yours by the Doom that came to Sarnath,

Irving Glassman, Brooklyn, N. Y.

There weren't very many Irving Glassmans in public records. Unfortunately, I can't say for sure who he was.

Weird Tales, March 1953, with a cover story "Slime," by Joseph Payne Brennan and cover art by Virgil Finlay. This is one of my favorite covers by Finlay for "The Unique Magazine." I think it's also one of his best. "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud was the cover story for the first issue of Weird Tales in March 1923. "Slime" has some similarities to "Ooze." As I wrote recently, it also has some similarities to "It" by Theodore Sturgeon.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales: The Fifteenth Anniversary

Weird Tales magazine turned fifteen years old in March 1938. In the anniversary installment of "The Eyrie," from May 1938, the editor allowed readers to speak on the occasion:

Fifteenth Anniversary

Richard H. Jamison writes from Valley Park, Missouri: "Congrats on WEIRD's fifteenth anniversary! You really started something with that March 1923 issue, for with that issue the first (and best) of the fantastics was born. There's been a world of improvement in the lusty youngster since he first saw the light of day fifteen years ago.

The first issue had rough edges, no interior illustrations, and many of the stories were pure and simple detective stories. But now we have smooth edges, the best illustrated magazine on the market, and the stories are uniformly good weird tales with quite a number of little masterpieces among them. I noticed a letter in the Eyrie in which the writer asked who had written the most stories for WT. Seabury Quinn has that distinction, having contributed no less than ninety-two stories since his first appeared in October 1923. He has also had two stories reprinted. His closest competitor is August Derleth with sixty-nine stories, no reprints."

The author of that letter would appear to have been an early cataloguer of Weird Tales, its contents, and the authors who wrote for the magazine. Good for him. Seabury Quinn would remain the all-time champion with 145 stories and fourteen articles published in Weird Tales in its original run. And August Derleth would remain in second place. As for Richard H. Jamison, he was presumably the same man who wrote letters to "The Eyrie" as Richard F. Jamison. If that's the case, then he would also have landed on a list of "Who Wrote the Most . . .?", for Jamison had eleven letters in "The Eyrie" from January 1937 to March 1940, and that would have tied him with six others for eighteenth place on the list.

Letters to "The Eyrie," May 1938, continued:

Back in 1923

Arthur Lincoln Brown writes from Dallas: "For a number of years now I have been reluctant to write you this letter, but today it rived its fetters and escaped to you. Back in 1923, when your magazine first made its appearance on the news stands, it was primarily a magazine daring to open the way to the inexhaustible field of weird fiction. I have watched it grow, expand, and improve until now it has reached the acme of weird fiction. In my estimation, it is today at the pinnacle of success. WEIRD TALES is a piece of literary art founded on the genius of its authors--on the co-operation of its readers--on the receptiveness the editor holds for each new suggestion of improvement. Readers of fiction sometimes are fortunate to discover WEIRD TALES early; others must advance, explore and read their way through numerous cheap and pulpy magazines that litter the news stands before they discover WEIRD TALES. By this I mean that some of us have had to graduate to it before we became satisfied; but once we have perused our first copy we are enmeshed within its realm of weird narratives. It has finally reached the summit of weird fiction, and may we keep it always superb in its unequaled uniqueness."

(Boldface added in both letters.)

Unfortunately, I can't say for sure who Richard H. Jamison and Arthur Lincoln Brown were. But at least we have their thoughts from nearly ninety years ago.

Weird Tales, May 1938, with a cover story, "Goetterdaemmerung," by Seabury Quinn and cover art by Margaret Brundage. Note the blurb at the top: "16th Year of Publication." That same blurb appeared on every cover during 1938 from March through December.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

"The Eyrie," November 1923

There are nineteen letters in Weird Tales for November 1923. It looks like the magazine was gaining pretty rapidly in popularity as 1923 went on. Beyond that, there were some very enthusiastic readers and fans aborning, people who praised and admired Weird Tales, passed issues around to their friends, looked for it on the newsstand every month, and began collecting and keeping issues instead of discarding them. (How many popular magazines went into the trash bin or incinerator in those days!)

One of the first Weird Tales controversies began in November 1924 when the editor, Edwin Baird, printed a letter by Mrs. D.M. Manzer, also known as Isa-belle Manzer, of Amarillo, Texas. The letter is practically illiterate. I can't imagine what the original manuscript would have looked like. Baird asked readers if he should publish the story based on Mrs. Manzer's letter and his brief description of her story. Evidently they said yes, for "The Transparent Ghost" was published as a three-part serial in February, March, and April 1924.

The writers of letters to "The Eyrie," November 1923:

• Mrs. D. M. Manzer (1872 or 1873-1944), aka Isa-belle Manzer, of Amarillo, Texas, who wrote a kind of cover letter for her story submission, "The Transparent Ghost."

• Eighteen-year-old Homer O(ldham) Peterson (b. June 12, 1905, Valparaiso, Indiana; d. Dec. 18, 1978, New Castle, Indiana) of Delaware, Ohio, who commented on several stories in previous issues. Peterson went on to become a high school teacher in Ohio and Indiana. He taught English, French, and journalism and was also a champion chess player.

• Twenty-year-old Cecil John Eustace (b. June 5, 1903, Walton-on-Thames, England; d. 1992) of the Bank of Montreal, St. Catherines, Ontario, who remarked that the August issue of Weird Tales was the first that he had seen in Canada. He was a recent arrival in Canada, having immigrated in August 1922 from his native England. Eustace was a writer of short stories and novels for popular and pulp magazines, including "Ten Days to Live" in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1928. Later he was an editor at J.M. Dent and Sons in Canada, retiring in 1967. He wrote a dozen books, some of which are novels, others non-fiction. He also collaborated with his daughter, (Elizabeth) Mary Eustace, on a musical. Cecil John Eustace was a Catholic author by the way.

• Austin Hall (1880-1933), author of the recently published serial "The People of the Comet."

• Charles G(ilbert) Kidney (1892-1945) of Cleveland, Ohio, who greatly admired Hall's story. Born in Chicago and having died in Ohio, Kidney was buried in the in-between state of Indiana.

• Sidney E. Johnson of Joplin, Missouri, who predicted that "the fiction center of the United States is going to shift from New York to Chicago." Presumably this was Sidney Evans Johnson (1882-1963). Johnson was like Johnny Appleseed: in his letter he wrote that he scattered copies of the magazine in an effort to grow more readers. Johnson had a second letter in Weird Tales in March 1925.

• Mrs. Elizabeth Purington (dates uncertain--believe it or not, there were and are several Elizabeth Puringtons in America) of Santa Ana, California, who wrote about a dream she had had.

• Joseph Faus (1898-1966) of Miami, Florida, who, with James Bennett Wooding (1897-1954), had had a story called "The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni" in the March 1923 issue of Weird Tales.

• World War I veteran Ralph S. Happel (1892-1963) of Albany, New York.

• Thomas J. Harris (dates unknown) of Brooklyn, New York.

• Walter F. McCanless (1876-1965) of Wadesboro, North Carolina. He had a story, "The Phantom Violinist," in the same issue and would have two more letters in "The Eyrie" in 1924.

• Godfrey Lampert (1898-1968) of Jasper, Indiana, who wrote a letter full of questions. Lampert was an artist, druggist, and city councilman in Jasper, a city known as a maker of office furniture.

• Lee Andrews (1902-1977) of Indianapolis, Indiana.

• Mrs. F. Wickman (1885-1942) of Duluth, Minnesota. Mrs. Wickman, aka Rosella (Cole) Wickman, really liked "The Gorilla" by Horatio V. Ellis, as well she should have, for the author, Horatio Vernon Ellis (1895-1945), was her son. And so we have an answer to the question of "Who was  . . ?" so commonly encountered when it comes to tellers of weird tales. 

• Thirteen-year-old Ralph Fingle (dates unknown; his name may have been misspelled in print) of Long Beach, California, who took a quarter from "a very nearly empty bank" so that he could buy a copy of Weird Tales and read "The People of the Comet."

• Mrs. Thomas Earl Davison (dates unknown) of Chicago, Illinois, who commented on stories from way back in the first issue. She thought of "The Basket" by Herbert J. Mangham (1896-1967) as "rotten." Believing she could do better, she submitted a story with her letter. I assume that her story is lost forever.

• Edith Lyle Ragsdale (ca. 1878-?) of Centralia, Illinois, who liked weird stories and went on to write three of her own published in Weird Tales in 1924-1926.

• E. B. (dates unknown) of West Point, Maine.

• Gertrude (Carey) Strauss (1866-1929) of Puyallup, Washington, an artist and poet.

Writers of letters were real people who lived real lives. They were not just ghosts with addresses. Maybe we forget that. Isa-belle Manzer notwithstanding, many of the readers of Weird Tales read and wrote at a high level, evidence that pulp magazines were not necessarily trash. And of course many of those readers knew what is weird fiction or a weird tale, and they sought out that genre. Many also liked what they called "the scientific story," or what we would call science fiction, or at least science fantasy. There wasn't yet a name for that type a story--science fiction as a term did not appear in print until 1929--but they sought out that type of story, too, and asked for more.

I have read only a few of the stories published in Weird Tales in 1923, but I sense that in a brief eight months, from March to November of that first year, their average quality improved, while authors were reaching towards just what makes weird fiction, science fiction, and science fantasy. And of course in that first year, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Seabury Quinn, Otis Adelbert Kline, Frank Owen, Anthony M. Rud, and other returning authors made their debut in the magazine. Weird Tales could have died in its first year or two. But there were enough people who believed in it and wanted it to go on--readers included--that it was able to survive. And again, here we are one hundred years later and able to hold in our hands a newly printed issue of "The Unique Magazine," the magazine that never dies.

Homer O. Peterson (1905-1978), far right, in a photograph from the Indianapolis Star Magazine, November 9, 1958, whole page number 153.

Cecil John Eustace (1903-1992), from an article called "New Novel Written as Short Stories" in the Toronto Star, March 9, 1929, page 32.

Forty-five years later, Cecil Eustace with his daughter Mary in the same newspaper, the Toronto Star, November 23, 1974, whole page number 119. Photograph by Dick Darrell.

Godfrey Lampert (1898-1968), third from the left (in the dark suit), from the Jasper, Indiana, Herald, December 31, 1955, page 1.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

"The Eyrie," October 1923

There are only a few letters in the October 1923 issue of Weird Tales, but some are long. H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) wrote again for the second time in two months. There are three excerpts from his long letter in this issue, including his first verse published in Weird Tales. Letter writers were:

• An Old Fashioned Woman of Hayward, California, a discerning reader with a good memory who noticed the similarity of:

"The Invisible Terror" by Hugh Thomason (dates unknown) in Weird Tales, June 1923, to "The Damned Thing" by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), which was reprinted in Weird Tales in September 1923;

"The Gray Death" by Loual B. Sugarman (1894-1965) in Weird Tales, June 1923, to "The Silver Menace" by Murray Leinster (1896-1975) in The Thrill Book, September 1 and September 15, 1919; and

"Penelope" by Vincent Starrett (1886-1974) in Weird Tales, May 1923, to "Phoebe" by O. Henry (1862-1910) in Everybody's Magazine, November 1907.

• J. L. of Jersey City, New Jersey.

• Richard P. "Dick" Tooker (1902-1988) of Minneapolis, Minnesota, who, like Lovecraft, had his second letter in two months and would have more--plus a short story--in future issues.

• Joel Shoemaker (1862-1937) of Seattle, Washington. Called "Reverend," he was an Indian fighter, newspaperman, politician, public speaker, and conservationist. A month after his letter was published, Shoemaker got into a tussle with Morris S. Brown, Seattle's "tallest policeman," who was trying to kidnap Shoemaker's three-year-old grandson, Billings Brown. Shoemaker's daughter, Mrs. Nannie S. Brown, fired a pistol at her ex-husband, while Joel Shoemaker "belabored his victim with an old hickory cane he has carried for 30 or 40 years." Brown should have known better than to mess with an old Kentuckian carrying a hickory cane, or with that old Kentuckian's wife, Luella Billings Shoemaker, who "rushed" the pistol to her daughter, ready for the firing. You can read all about it in "Brown Facing Prison Term" in the Seattle Star, November 28, 1923, page 3.

• Lee Torpie of San Francisco, California.

• Dr. Henry C. Murphy (1862-1932) of Brooklyn, New York. He was a long-practicing medical doctor whose father was also a medical doctor. In response to his letter, editor Edwin M. Baird wrote:

The foregoing was written by Dr. Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn; and, before we comment upon it, we rise to remark that WEIRD TALES seems to offer a special appeal to physicians and surgeons. They like to read our sort of stories, and they like to write 'em. There is scarcely a day that we don't get at least one weird story written by a doctor. Doctors, it seems, encounter some weird adventures.

I have written before about medical doctors. Very often, my writing about doctors has gone along with my writing about psychopaths and serial killers. Click on the menu items on the right to read more.

• H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), who wrote a long letter and excerpted two of his own poems therein.

H.P. Lovecraft started out the year 1923 with the publication of his serialized novelette "The Lurking Fear" in the magazine Home Brew. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists nine issues of Home Brew, five published in 1922 and four in 1923. "The Lurking Fear" ran in all four of the issues for 1923, from January through April.

I wondered the other day whether "Dagon" was Lovecraft's first illustrated story in a national magazine. I guess it depends on what you think of as a national magazine, but "The Lurking Fear" in Home Brew was also illustrated, by Clark Ashton Smith of all people.

Home Brew was edited and published in New York by George Julian Houtain (1884-1945) and his second wife, Elsie Dorothy (Grant) McLaughlin Houtain (1889-?). They were members of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA), and she served as the second female president of the organization. I have always thought of Home Brew as an amateur publication and, as such, not a national magazine. On the other hand, "America's Zippiest Pocket Magazine" was available as far west as Cincinnati.

I have read a reference to Home Brew that it was discontinued in 1924. Lovecraft was published in its pages in 1922-1923. Weird Tales must have come along at just the right time for him. "The Lurking Fear," by the way, was reprinted in Weird Tales in June 1928.

Note the blurb on the cover regarding CAS: "the Artist Who Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe."

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The First of Lovecraft

No author is identified more with Weird Tales than is Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) of Providence, Rhode Island, and--for a short time--Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights, New York. Lovecraft was thirty-two years old when the first issue of Weird Tales was published in March 1923. I imagine that he had waited all of his life for such a title to appear.

I don't know when or where Lovecraft first came upon Weird Tales, although it's clear by reading the first letter below that he did not see the March issue right away. According to his biographer, L. Sprague de Camp, Lovecraft was "urged by his friends to submit stories to this new market." Lovecraft resisted. (His amateurism and dilettantism are maddening even to this day.) "About April," de Camp wrote, "Lovecraft let himself be persuaded to send [Edwin] Baird five manuscripts." (From Lovecraft: A Biography, Ballantine Books, 1976, pp. 190-191.) Lovecraft sent a kind of cover letter with his submissions. It reads like a résumé by a person who doesn't want the job. It's clear to me that Lovecraft lacked self-esteem or feelings of self-worth. He almost demanded rejection. But that's what a person often does who has experienced rejection from those closest to him, especially, or perhaps exclusively, from his parents.

The long excerpt below begins with Edwin Baird's introduction and continues with the full text of Lovecraft's first letter in Weird Tales, September 1923. After that, Baird had his one-sentence closing. I have made the names of several authors boldface.

     Equally interesting is the letter from H. P. Lovecraft, another master of the weird tale, from whom we have accepted some stories for your entertainment. Mr. Lovecraft's letter, unlike Mr. Triem's, doesn’t exactly flatter WEIRD TALES, but we are nevertheless glad to pass it on to you:

     "My Dear Sir: Having a habit of writing weird, macabre, and fantastic stories for my own amusement, I have lately been simultaneously hounded by nearly a dozen well-meaning friends into deciding to submit a few of these Gothic horrors to your newly-founded periodical. The decision is herewith carried out. Enclosed are five tales written between 1917 and 1923.

     "Of these the first two are probably the best. If they be unsatisfactory, the rest need not be read . . . 'The Statement of Randolph Carter' is, in the main, an actual dream experienced on the night of December 21-22, 1919; the characters being myself (Randolph Carter) and my friend, Samuel Loveman, the poet and editor of 'Twenty-one Letters of Ambrose Bierce.'

     "I have no idea that these things will be found suitable, for I pay no attention to the demands of commercial writing. My object is such pleasure as I can obtain from the creation of certain bizarre pictures, situations, or atmospheric effects; and the only reader I hold in mind is myself.

     "My models are invariably the older writers, especially Poe, who has been my favorite literary figure since early childhood. Should any miracle impel you to consider the publication of my tales, I have but one condition to offer; and that is that no excisions be made. If the tale can not be printed as written, down to the very last semicolon and comma, it must gracefully accept rejection. Excision by editors is probably one reason why no living American author has a real prose style . . . But I am probably safe, for my MSS. are not likely to win your consideration. 'Dagon' has been rejected by _____ _____, to which I sent it under external impulsion--much as I am sending you the enclosed. This magazine sent me a beautifully tinted and commendably impersonal rejection slip . . .

     "I like WEIRD TALES very much, though I have seen only the April number. Most of the stories, of course, are more or less commercial--or should I say conventional?--in technique, but they all have an enjoyable angle. 'Beyond the Door,' by Paul Suter, seems to me the most truly touched with the elusive quality of original genius--though 'A Square of Canvas,' by Anthony M. Rud, would be a close second if not so reminiscent in denouement of Balzac's 'Le Chef d’Ouvre inconnu'--as I recall it across a lapse of years, without a copy at hand. However, one doesn't expect a very deep thrill in this sophisticated and tradesman-minded age. Arthur Machen is the only living man I know of who can stir truly profound and spiritual horror."

     Despite the foregoing, or because of it, we are using some of Mr. Lovecraft's unusual stories, and you will find his "Dagon" in the next issue of WEIRD TALES.

L. Sprague de Camp had this reaction:

Lovecraft had done everything [in his letter] to assure rejection of his stories: the haughty tone, the art-for-art's-sake pose, the deprecation of his own work, and the mention of a previous rejection.

It strikes me as the work not of a man in his thirties but of a boy in his teens.

* * *

As promised, Weird Tales published Lovecraft's story "Dagon" in its issue of October 1923. William F. Heitman's illustration (below) is a good and understated one. Heitman was not especially good at depicting weird, fantasy, horror, or the supernatural. The real heart of "Dagon" was probably outside his range as an illustrator, but a picture of a man in a boat works. I wonder if this was the first published illustration of a work by Lovecraft, or at the very least in a mainstream publication.

"Dagon" is from 1917 or 1919. Nineteen nineteen was also the year in which Lovecraft's contemporary J.C. Henneberger (1890-1969) arrived in Indianapolis and in which The Thrill Book was in publication. I haven't read every story published in Weird Tales to that date, October 1923, but I'm not sure that any one of them is like "Dagon" in its implications, which are of vast expanses of time and the insignificance of man or men lost in an indifferent or even hostile cosmos. (Lovecraft's narrator is essentially a human-like device used to tell a cosmic story.) Edwin Baird called it "a radically different sort of story." There are problems with "Dagon" to be sure. One is Lovecraft's patented overwrought prose. Another is the closing, which became a cliché not only in his work but in myriads more stories in and out of Weird Tales. Only seven short years separated its composition from that of "The Call of Cthulhu." Call "Dagon" a practice run for Lovecraft's later story. But we can also see in these two stories how much Lovecraft matured as a builder of sustained works of fiction between 1919 and 1926.

* * *

"Dagon" takes up less than two and a half pages in Weird Tales. Lovecraft's second published letter, which appeared on page 82, isn't quite that long, but it's long enough. A full paragraph of it has to do with "Dagon."

Once again, Edwin Baird introduced Lovecraft, after which his correspondent launched into another long missive. Included are excerpts from two poems by Lovecraft, his first lines of verse to be published in the magazine. Baird stepped in twice before writing a closing to "The Eyrie" for the month of October. Again, I have made the names of authors boldface.

You may recall the letter from H. P. Lovecraft, published here last month. A bit caustic, that letter; and today we have pleasure in offering another, which, if less stinging, is none-the-less enjoyable. Our friend Lovecraft always has something to say when he writes. Thus:

     "Dear Mr. Baird: I should apologize if my former letter seemed to tax WEIRD TALES with seeking conventional material. Such was not my intention in any way. I only meant that I presumed you would not wish too subtle or cryptical material for presentation to the general public. There is a difference between mere originality and delicate symbolism, or hideously nebulous adumbration. How many American readers outside the frankly 'highbrow' class, for example, would find any pleasure or coherent impression in Arthur Machen's 'The White People,' or in the fantastic passages of the same author's 'Hill of Dreams'? In a word, I take it that WEIRD TALES wants definite stories, with a maximum of plot, tension of situation, explosive climax, and statement rather than too elusive suggestion--this rather than, the Baudelairian prose-poem of spiritual Satanism, where chiseled phrase, lyrical tone, color, and an opiate luxuriance of exotic imagery form the chief sources of the macabre impression . . . .

     "I lately read the May WEIRD TALES, and congratulate yon on Mr. Humphrey's 'The Floor Above,' [for a moment I had a shiver which the author didn't intend--I thought he was going to use an idea which I am planning to use myself!! But it wasn't so, after all], which is a close second to my favorite, 'Beyond the Door.' Evidently my taste runs to the architectural! 'Penelope' is clever--but Holy Pete! If the illustrious Starrett's ignorance of astronomy is an artfully conceived attribute of his character's whimsical narrative, I'll say he's right there with the verisimilitude! I wrote monthly astronomical articles for the daily press between 1906 and 1918, and have a vast affection for the celestial spheres.

     "Some day I may send you a possible filler, beginning:

’’Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, 
Past the wan-moon'd abysses of night,
I have lived o'er my lives without number,
I have sounded ail things with my sight--
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being
driven to madness and fright."

[The lines are from Lovecraft's poem "Nemesis," which was printed in the April 1924 issue of Weird Tales.]

     Mr. Lovecraft, you will observe, is quite as deft at poetry as he is with prose; and as further evidence of this, we submit the prologue to a 300-line heroic poem of his that we may print some day:

"I am he who howls in the night;
I am he who moans in the snow;
I am he who hath never seen light;
I am he who mounts from below.
My car is the car of death;
My wings are the wings of dread;
My breath is the north wind's breath;
My prey are the cold and dead."

     As you know, we are publishing a series of Mr. Lovecraft’s prose pieces, beginning with “Dagon;” and of this story he wrote us, in part:

     "I shall venture 'Dagon' as a sort of test of my stuff in general. If you don't care for this, you won't care for anything of mine. . . . It is not that 'Dagon' is the best of my tales, but that it is perhaps the most direct and least subtle in its 'punch'; so that for popular publication it is most likely to please most. In copying it I have touched up one or two crude spots--it having been written in 1917, directly after a lull of nine years in my fiction-writing. Naturally I was a bit rusty in the management of the prose. A friend of mine--Clark Ashton Smith, the California poet of horror, madness and morbid beauty--showed this yam to George Sterling, who declared he liked it very much, though suggesting (absurdly enough, as I view it!) that I have the monolith topple over and kill the 'thing' . . . a piece of advice which makes me feel that poets should stick to their sonneteering . . .

     "My love of the weird makes me eager to do anything I can to put good material in the path of a magazine which so gratifyingly cultivates that favorite element. I shall await with interest the next issues, with the tales you mention, and am meanwhile trying to get the opening number through a newsdealer. I am sure the venture will elicit some notable contributions as its fame spreads--and the extent of that fame may be judged from the fact that people in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and California have been equally prompt in calling my attention to it and urging me to try my luck!"

     In a way, "Dagon" is a radically different sort of story, even for WEIRD TALES, and those that will follow it are even more so. For this reason, we shall be particularly interested in hearing what our readers think of the Lovecraft tales. THE EDITOR.

Lovecraft's next letter and next story on his own--"The Picture in the House"--would appear in the issue of January 1924. (Collaborating with his future wife, Sonia H. Greene, he co-wrote, ghost-wrote, or revised "The Invisible Monster" in the November 1923 issue. His contribution was anonymous.) Lovecraft also had stories in the issues of February, March, April, and May/June/July 1924. That's a nice run in the first year and more of "The Unique Magazine."

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

"The Eyrie," September 1923

Letter writers in Weird Tales, September 1923:

• Zahrah E. Preble (1880-1934), writing from Zuni, New Mexico, where she was on expedition with her future husband Frederick Webb Hodge (1864-1956). She was a singer, dancer, and educator and had keen interests in American Indians and their culture.

• Franklin A. Over, writing as F.A. Ells-Over (1902-1972) of San Diego, California. (Ells was his mother's maiden name.) It looks as though Ells-Over submitted a story with his letter, but I don't know where that story went. Ells-Over was a photographer, writer, and orchid enthusiast.

• Curtis F. Day (1898-1968) of Somerville, Massachusetts, who had a peculiar interest in people who had been buried alive. He mentioned Edgar Allan Poe in his letter of course. Day was a writer and bookseller.

• Catherine H(artley) Griggs (1893-1941) of Waterbury, Connecticut. She was a member of the Society for Psychic Research. She had an article in the journal of the society in the issue of November 1918 in which she described a sighting of a ghost by her mother and aunt while they were in Vienna.

• Paul Ellsworth Triem (1882-1976), whose letter was presumably to accompany the submission of his story "The Evening Wolves," serialized in the issues of June and July/August 1923.

• H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). This was Lovecraft's first appearance in Weird Tales. He would next have a story, "Dagon," and a letter in the issue of October 1923. I'll have more next on the first of Lovecraft.

• Just Another Weird One.

• Charles White of Quebec City, Quebec, who may have been the same Charles White who had an entry in "The Cauldron" in the issue of July/August 1923.

• Maxine Worthington of Lincoln, Nebraska.

• Paul Bratton of Sacramento, California.

• Richard R.  "Dick" Tooker (1902-1988) of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In all, Tooker had six letters and one story in Weird Tales from 1923 to 1943, an admirable career as a reader of and contributor to "The Unique Magazine."

• Mrs. E.L. Depew of San Francisco, California.

• John James Arthur, Jr. of Oak Grove Farm, Coleman, Texas. I found a John James Arthur, Jr., with dates of 1903-1978, buried at Ballinger, Texas.

• William Moesel of New York City, possibly William H. Moesel (1903-1991), a draftsman and structural engineer.

• V. Van Blascom Parke of Arlington Heights, Massachusetts, in actuality Lavinia "Venie" Van Blarcom Parke aka Mrs. H.B. Parke (1850-1937), a writer, poet, and author of Dorothy and the Christ-Child (1896), illustrated by Will Phillip Hooper, as well as stories in St. Nicholas and other magazines. She claimed to have lived in a haunted house and even to have embraced a ghost!

• C.D. Bradley of Oakland, California.

• R(obert) Linwood Lancaster (Jr.) (1904-1978) of Raleigh, North Carolina, who predicted "a very bright future" for Weird Tales magazine. Now here we are a hundred years later observing its anniversary.

• H. Cusick of New York City.

• V.H. Bethell of San Francisco, California.

Jessie Burns Parke (1889-1964) was the daughter of Lavinia Van Blarcom Parke, letter-writer to Weird Tales. The mother was an author and poet, the daughter an artist and illustrator. Here is one of her drawings, of Halloween harlequins, close to the season for such things. Jessie Burns Parke also drew the pictures for a deck of Tarot cards that she co-created with occultist Paul Foster Case (1884-1954). His October birthday is coming up, too.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley