Weird Tales: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary-Part Three

Seabury Quinn had the second essay in "The Eyrie" in March 1948. His is quite a bit longer than August Derleth's. His, too, includes a list, but Quinn's is longer, and I sense a kindlier inclusivity in it. He even used the word inclusion in his essay, albeit in a different context. Quinn's essay is in the same spirit, I think, as early observances of anniversaries in Weird Tales. That's fitting, I think. And I think his essay is better than that written by Derleth, who preceded him.

Weird Tales, A Retrospect--Quinn

The vast majority of people will tell you, "I don’t like ghost stories," meaning, thereby, "I am afraid of them." A relatively small minority of cultured and imaginative readers either find a sort of masochistic thrill in having the daylights scared out of them or, completely agnostic, still get a lift from reading stories of "ghoulies and ghosties, long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night." It is for this select, sophisticated minority WEIRD TALES is published, and that it has fulfilled its purpose is more than merely adequately proved by the fact that it celebrates its Silver Anniversary this issue.

Until the advent of WEIRD TALES the longest-lived magazine dedicated to the supernatural story was the Black Cat which first saw the light of print October, 1895, and perished in September, 1906, after eleven years of superservice to discerning readers on both sides of the Atlantic. True, it had a temporary recrudescence between December, 1919, and October, 1920, but in that little interval it functioned only as a zombie, without life or spirit.

The publication of WEIRD TALES filled a real want. Thrill-seekers, votaries of the ghost story, people fed up with the boy-meets-girl formula or the adventures of impossible detectives flocked to it as the thirsty flocked to wet-goods emporia at the recision of the Volstead Act, and writers who had turned out one or more good stories of the supernatural and found no market for them sent in their cherished brain-children with a sigh of profound thankfulness.

The list of names which has appeared on WEIRD TALES contents pages reads like a roster of those already great or destined to greatness in this particular genre: H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, E. Hoffman Price, Frank Belknap Long, H.G. Wells, Sax Rohmer, Major George Fielding Elliot, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Carl Jacobi, A.V. Harding, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Frank Owen, Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry E. Whitehead [sic], Earl Pierce [sic], Greye LaSpina, Edmund Hamilton [sic], David H. Keller, Malcolm Jameson, Nictzin Dyalhys [sic], Otis Adelbert Kline--this is but a sampling of the galaxy made at random and from memory, to count them all would be like numbering the Milky Way.

One thing, however, WEIRD TALES writers have in common: ability to tell good stories well. It has been said that "WEIRD TALES prints slick-paper fiction wrapped in pulp." However false or true that estimate may be it is an undisputed fact that more WEIRD TALES writers are "tapped” for inclusion in anthologies than those of any other pulp magazine, that many of its regular contributors are also "names" in the slick-paper field, and that a high percentage of them have had one or more successful books published.

In its quarter-century of publication WEIRD TALES has had many imitators, but no real competitors. Some of these degenerated--or evolved, if you prefer that term --into straight science-fiction magazines, some were so patently sex-motivated that the Post Office and/or the censors took them in hand, some misjudged their market and used shock--shock--shock! as their formula and paid small heed to literary composition. All of them are gone, and of a dozen imitative magazines put out ten years ago not one can be found on the newsstands today. WEIRD TALES enters on its second quarter-century as truly the unique magazine as it was when No. 1 of Volume I was offered to a critical public.

SEABURY QUINN.

(Boldface added.)

Seabury Quinn speaks before the Free Lance Writers Association in Washington, D.C., from an article in The Sunday Star Pictorial Magazine, July 27, 1947, page 15. There are men in the group, but I see the women, who remind me of Helen Hokinson's clubwomen. Could there be another teller of weird tales in this photograph? Photograph by Paul Schmick.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary-Part Two

August Derleth wrote the first essay to appear in "The Eyrie" in March 1948. Half of it is a catalogue of names and titles. I'll have more on that in a minute. First, Derleth's essay: 

25th Anniversary Issue --
August Derleth

FOR a quarter of a century WEIRD TALES has given those who delight in the fantastic and macabre the best in the genre, and it has remained the most consistently satisfying outlet of its kind. For all these years authors and readers have looked to this unique magazine as something very special, and, despite a welter of imitators, something very special it has remained. A magazine which has brought to the attention of its public the work of such authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry S. Whitehead, Ray Bradbury, and many another fine writer has justified many times over its sterling reason for being and has earned its right to exist. When I began to read WEIRD TALES with the very first issue, I was thirteen, and I had to work at mowing lawns, chopping wood, and the like to earn the quarter that would buy the magazine. Few purchases have ever given me such lasting satisfaction.

It seems incredible that a quarter of a century has passed, and now, when I look back over those rich years of WEIRD TALES, I can experience again the wonderful delight of discovery and the deep reading satisfaction I knew in such stories as Lovecraft's The Rats in the Walls, The Dunwich Horror, The Music of Erich Zann, The Outsider, and others, [Seabury] Quinn's The Phantom Farmhouse, [H.F.] Arnold's The Night Wire, [Clark Ashton] Smith's A Rendezvous in Averoigne, [Henry S.] Whitehead's Passing of a God, [Arthur J.] Burks' The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee, [Robert E.] Howard's The Black Stone, [C.L.] Moore's Shambleau, [Mary Elizabeth] Counselman's The Three Marked Pennies, [Nictzin] Dyalhis' When the Green Star Waned, [Donald] Wandrei's The Red Brain, [H. Warner] Munn's The Werewolf of Ponkert, [Ray] Bradbury's The Lake, [J. Paul] Suter's Beyond the Door, [Frank] Owen's The Wind That Tramps the World, [Frank Belknap] Long's The Hounds of Tindalos, [Greye] La Spina's Invaders from the Dark, [E. Hoffman] Price's Stranger from Kurdistan, [Carl] Jacobi's Revelations in Black, [A.] Merritt's The Woman of the Wood, [Edmond] Hamilton's Monster-God of Mamurth, [Wilfred Branch] Talman's Two Black Bottles, [Everil] Worrell's The Canal, [John Martin] Leahy's In Amundsen's Tent, [Robert] Bloch's Enoch, and countless other stories space does not permit mentioning.

These first twenty-five years have given us a rich heritage in the strange and wonderful; I have every confidence that the next twenty-five will add increasing stature to WEIRD TALES. 

AUGUST DERLETH.

(Boldface added.)

Alas, Weird Tales had just six and a half years left in its original run. The second twenty-five-year mark would be observed in a second run of just four issues in 1973-1974.

The first name Derleth mentioned in his essay is that of his literary god, H.P. Lovecraft. He couldn't have done anything less. Despite the fact that Quinn and Derleth had more stories in Weird Tales, it is Lovecraft's name that is most closely identified with the magazine. By the way, today, August 20, 2024, would have been Lovecraft's 134th birthday, had he lived as long as some of his characters.

Derleth's second paragraph is mostly just a list. Lists are fine. We all make them. But they're not writing. At best, a list is just filler. At their worst, lists are name-dropping. In his essay "Moving Past Lovecraft," from 2012, author and editor Jeff VanderMeer dropped a lot of names that, truth be told, are not very well known. I guess the rest of us are benighted in comparison because we have different names on our lists, names not to his liking. In the 100th-anniversary issue of Weird Tales, from 2023, the current editor of the magazine, Jonathan Maberry, also dropped names in his essay "Cosmic Horror and Weird Tales Go Hand-in-Tentacle." I sense that to be filler. In any case, lists are, again, not writing. Beyond that, we all have access to names and titles and now even to whole stories in Weird Tales. We can all read them and make lists of our own. Ironically, Mr. VanderMeer's call for us to move past Lovecraft appears to have gone unheeded, as the centennial issue of Weird Tales is subtitled "Cosmic Horror Issue." (According to Wikipedia, "cosmic horror" is a term synonymous with "Lovecraftian horror." Jeff VanderMeer even used the term "cosmic horror" in his essay.) Lovecraft's name is mentioned second in Mr. Maberry's essay, second only to that of Robert W. Chambers. Too bad, Mr. VanderMeer. You tried.

I don't know what, if anything, it meant if you were not included in August Derleth's list from 1948. Maybe he liked you just fine, he just wasn't permitted the space to include you. On the other hand, maybe you were like C. Hall Thompson, who may have been on a completely different kind of list created by Derleth, and whose last story for Weird Tales appeared in the May issue of 1948, just two months after the anniversary issue.

To be concluded . . .

August Derleth, from the Green Bay Press-Gazette, March 31, 1963, page 13.

Revised on the morning of publication.
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary-Part One

In January 1940, Weird Tales began as a bimonthly rather than monthly magazine. There were no more April issues, but March and May remained. So in March 1948, Weird Tales celebrated twenty-five years in print with a commemorative cover by Lee Brown Coye and messages inside from the editor, presumably Dorothy McIlwraith, and its two leading contributors, at least in terms of the number of pieces each had published in the magazine. These were August Derleth and Seabury Quinn.

The introduction, from "The Eyrie," March 1948:

Weird Tales, 25 Years

ON this occasion of WEIRD TALES' twenty-fifth birthday, we'd like to share with you the kind comments of Seabury Quinn and August Derleth, especially sent to us for this anniversary. These two have known and contributed to WEIRD from its earliest days; their many superb stories and always-helpful suggestions through the years have contributed in no small way to the magazine’s success. And when we thank them we mean to thank, too, all the other fine contributors and friends who have helped us do the job that is your WEIRD TALES.

To be continued . . . 

Weird Tales, the 25th-anniversary issue, March 1948, with cover art by Lee Brown Coye. The names on the cover were some of the magazine's heavy hitters.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Dorothy McIlwraith (1891-1976)-Part 2

Part 2-Life and Work

Dorothy Stevens McIlwraith
Editor

Born October 14, 1891, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Died August 23, 1976, Orangeville, Ontario, Canada

Dorothy Stevens McIlwraith was born on October 14, 1891, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her family, which had originated in Ayr, Scotland, was prosperous and brimming with accomplished people. Her grandfather, Thomas McIlwraith I (1824-1903), emigrated from his homeland to Canada in 1853, settling in Hamilton and becoming a coal merchant. His avocation, however, was ornithology. McIlwraith's younger brother Andrew McIlwraith I (1831-1891), also a businessman, studied the natural world and had a special interest in butterflies. Thomas McIlwraith's daughter, Jean Newton McIlwraith (1859-1938), was known as an author of historical romances and non-fiction for children. Educated at Ladies' College in Hamilton, Ontario, and through correspondence by Queen Margaret College, Glasgow University, Scotland, she worked as a reader and editor in New York from 1902 until 1919. Her employer for all or most of that time was Doubleday, Page and Company, based in Garden City, Long Island. (1) Jean retired to Canada in 1922, but not before being replaced by another McIlwraith at Doubleday.

Dorothy McIlwraith graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1914 and moved to the United States at Christmastime, 1917. Following in her aunt's footsteps, she became a reader and editor for Doubleday, Page and Company. Described as five feet, three inches tall, with a fair complexion, brown hair, and brown eyes, she would eventually run two magazines published by her company. During her decades-long stay in this country, she lived in Manhattan and Melville, Long Island, and traveled many times to Canada and her ancestral homeland of Scotland. On one of those trips, she traveled aboard the S.S. Transylvania, a fitting conveyance for a later editor of weird fiction. I might also mention her name. The surname McIlwraith refers to a "brindled lad," but it includes the Scottish word wraith, which means ghost, also fitting. Dorothy's middle name, Stevens, was the unmarried name of her mother, Mary Stevens. Dorothy's father was Thomas Forsyth McIlwraith, a coal merchant like his father before him.

Short Stories magazine began publishing in 1890 as a literary magazine, but not long after being purchased by Doubleday, Short Stories became a "quality pulp magazine" in 1910. Harry E. Maule (1886-1971) assumed the post as editor in 1912 and guided the magazine through more than a decade of Western, detective, and adventure stories. Roy De S. Horn took over for Maule in the year the stock market crashed. Maule returned to the editorship from 1932 to 1936, when his long-serving assistant, Dorothy McIlwraith, became full editor of Short Stories. During her first full year at the post, in December 1937, Short Stories, Inc., purchased the magazine. Dorothy remained and would soon have added duties with her new employer.

Between 1924 and 1938, Weird Tales was published by the Popular Fiction Company with editorial offices first in Indianapolis, then in Chicago. The editor during that time was the much admired Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940). Short Stories, Inc., purchased Weird Tales in November 1938, and moved its offices to New York City. By then in failing health, Wright went with the magazine with which he is so closely associated. Dorothy McIlwraith was assigned by her publisher to assist Wright at the end of 1939. With the May 1940 issue, she took over full editorship of Weird Tales. Although readers had nothing against her, they were entirely for Farnsworth Wright. They could not have known of course that he would be in his grave before the year was out.

The 1940s were another decade of change for Weird Tales. Authors and artists came and went. August Derleth and Robert Bloch remained two of the few standbys. Ray Bradbury and others took the place of the departed. There were fewer serials, and "The Eyrie" wasn't as chatty as it used to be. Perhaps in compensation, the magazine instituted a Weird Tales Club, with names and locations of members printed in its pages. Page counts dropped, from 128 pages to 112 pages in 1943 and to 96 pages in 1944. To read a description of the magazine during this time, you get the idea that decay had set in. Dorothy McIlwraith may not get much of the blame for that, but she may be considered guilty by association.

As editor, Dorothy was assisted by Henry Aveline Perkins (to September 1942) and Lamont Buchanan (from September 1942 to September 1949). Perkins had previously worked in comic books. An Internet search reveals little more about him. That fact would make him a good candidate for a future blog entry. Lamont Buchanan is another story. I have written about him already and still have more to write. In fact, it may be time for an overhaul of what we know and believe about him and the author known as Allison V. Harding. In any case, Dorothy McIlwraith and Lamont Buchanan, both of Scottish descent, may have felt some kind of kinship despite the years separating them.

I'll give credit where it is due before bringing this all to a close. Dorothy McIlwraith nurtured the careers of many beginning artists and writers, Ray Bradbury especially. She also helped launch the career of Frank Kelly Freas with his first cover for Weird Tales, a portrayal of a piping god Pan (Nov. 1950). According to several websites, she also helped create the character John Thunstone in stories authored by Manly Wade Wellman. None of that was enough, however. In September 1953, Weird Tales succumbed to a trend and became a digest-sized magazine. That lasted for a year. In September 1954, Weird Tales gave up the ghost. Short Stories continued, but without Dorothy McIlwraith. She left in the same month Weird Tales came to an end (2) but continued to work in New York until 1964. Some years before she had purchased a farmhouse in Melville, Ontario, a town by the same name as her hometown in the United States. She retired to that farmhouse in 1964 and lived out her remaining years in the province of her birth. Dorothy Stevens McIlwraith died on August 23, 1976, in Orangeville, Ontario, Canada. She was eighty-four years old. (3)

Notes

(1) Jean Newton McIlwraith's books: The Making of Mary (1895) as by Jean Forsyth; A Book about Shakespeare (1898); The Span o'Life: A Tale of Louisbourg and Quebec (1899) with William McLennan;  Canada (1899); A Book about Longfellow (1900); The Curious Career of Roderick Campbell (1901) illustrated by Frank Schoonover; Sir Frederick Haldimand (1904), for the Makers of Canada series; A Diana of Quebec (1912); The Little Admiral (1924); Kinsmen at War (1927); and the libretto for the comic opera Ptarmigan (1895).

(2) Short Stories did not survive the decade and came to an end in August 1959. The associate editor at the time was Frank Belknap Long, previously a contributor to Weird Tales.
(3) You can read more about the family of Dorothy McIlwraith in the work of Dr. Eva-Marie Kröller at the University of British Columbia, who is working on a biography. I should add that Dorothy McIlwraith's brother, Thomas McIlwraith, was an anthropologist. I wonder if he ever studied the cult of Cthulhu.

Weird Tales for May 1940, the first issue for which Dorothy McIlwraith received credit as editor. The cover art was by Hannes Bok.

Frank Kelly Freas' first cover for Weird Tales, November 1950. 

And the final issue of Weird Tales, September 1954, with recycled cover art by Virgil Finlay, originally from the August 1939 issue of the magazine.

Thanks to Dr. Eva-Marie Kröller, Prof. Thomas F. McIlwraith, and Randal A. Everts for corrections and further information.
Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley