The American Magazine Weird Tales is famous to have published in its pages of the accounts and news belonging mainly to the kind of the Fantasy. This magazine pulp was launched in March 1923 by Jacob Clark Henneberger and J.M. Lassinger. These two editors, interested by the publications intended for the young people, wished to benefit from will have positive others pulp , following the example Black Mask.

Weird Tales knows a first difficult year of publication, under the crook of its first editor association, Edwin Baird. This one publishes despite everything the first texts of H.P. Lovecraft as from October 1923. Certain months, the numbers do not appear at all or are gathered in order to reduce the debts of the magazine. It is only in 1924, after the post of editor association was proposed with H.P. Lovecraft (station that the latter refuses, even if it has just married; the financial position of the magazine and the prospect to come to settle in Chicago make him indeed decline this offer), that the magazine finds in the person of Farnsworth Wright her true heart.

This one made enter to the service of the publication extremely popular names of Seabury Quinn, Edgar Hoffmann Price and, some time later, of Abraham Merritt or Robert E. Howard, whose adventures of Conan the Barbarian make the beautiful hours of the magazine. Like the majority of the pulps , Weird Tales knows a chaotic, suffering economic life however inter alia competition of the radiophonic dramas, Comic S or of the editions at broken prices of novel of Fantasy. After the death of H.P. Lovecraft in 1937 of a cancer of the intestine and the withdrawal of Wright in 1940 of the continuations of the disease of Parkinson, the magazine périclite until the complete stop of its publication in September 1954.

This magazine contributed to make known talents of the Fantasy like Fritz Leiber, C.L. Moore or Clark Ashton Smith.

Philosophy

The magazine, which carried like subtitles The Unique Magazine (Translation: the single magazine in its kind), contained in its first years of the accounts of horror inspired of the Dark fantasy. Then, the leading line moved gently towards the more traditional Fantasy.

Edwin Baird, its first editor association, thus summarized the goal of the magazine in the leading article of the first number, gone back to March 1923: “ Weird Bruise present accounts different from what you will be able to find in the other magazines. Extraordinary, grotesque fantastic accounts sometimes, telling abnormal and strange stories, finally, stories to cut you the breath. Some nightmarish, others, will be written hand of Master, will treat prohibited prone …”

Some authors published in Weird Bruise

(Alphabetically)

• Clark Ashton Smith;

• Frank Belknap Long Jr.;
• Jacques Bergier (only French, twice by the letters to the Editor);
• August Derleth ;
• the illustrator Virgil Finlay will make its first weapons there;
• Edmond Hamilton;
• E. Hoffmann Price;
• Robert E. Howard;
• John Martin Leahy;
• Abraham Merritt ;
• Fritz Leiber ;
• H.P. Lovecraft ;
• C.L. Moore;
• Margaret Clear St;
• G.G. Pendraves;
• Tennessee Williams (first professional text of the Playwright).

French anthologies

• the best accounts of Weird Bruise Volume 1 - period 1925-32 , presented by Jacques Sadoul, Éditions I have Lu, 1975.
• the best accounts of Weird Tales Volume 2 - period 1933-37 , presented by Jacques Sadoul, Éditions I have Lu, 1975.
• the best accounts of Weird Tales Volume 3 - period 1938-42 , presented by Jacques Sadoul, Éditions I have Lu, 1979.
• the best accounts of Weird Tales , presented by Jacques Sadoul, Éditions I have Lu, 1989.

External bonds

• the history of Weird Bruise.

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