page_title: Weird Tales
section_title: Edwin Baird
hierarchical_section_title: Weird Tales / Contents and reception / Edwin Baird
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Umschlag der ersten Ausgabe des Pulp-Magazins Weird Tales vom März 1923. Umschlag von R.R. Epperly (Richard Ruh Epperly, 1891-1973). Enthält die Erzählung Ooze von Anthony M. Rud.English: Cover of the pulp magazine Weird Tales (March 1923, vol. 1, no. 1) featuring Ooze by Anthony M. Rud.
context_page_description: Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, printed early work by H. P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and Clark Ashton Smith, all of whom would go on to be popular writers, but within a year the magazine was in financial trouble. Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher, Rural Publishing Corporation, to Lansinger and refinanced Weird Tales, with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. The first issue under Wright's control was dated November 1924. The magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks it prospered over the next fifteen years. Under Wright's control the magazine lived up to its subtitle, "The Unique Magazine", and published a wide range of unusual fiction.
  Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos stories first appeared in Weird Tales, starting with "The Call of Cthulhu" in 1928. These were well-received, and a group of writers associated with Lovecraft wrote other stories set in the same milieu. Robert E.
context_section_description: Edwin Baird, the first editor of Weird Tales, was not an ideal choice for the job as he disliked horror stories; his expertise was in crime fiction, and most of the material he acquired was bland and unoriginal.  The writers Henneberger had been hoping to publish, such as Garland and Hough, failed to submit anything to Baird, and the magazine published mostly traditional ghost fiction, with many of the stories narrated by characters in lunatic asylums, or told in diary format.  The cover story for the first issue was "Ooze", by Anthony M. Rud; there was also the first installment of a serial, "The Thing of A Thousand Shapes", by Otis Adelbert Kline, and 22 other stories.  Ashley suggests that the better pulp writers from whom Baird did manage to acquire material, such as Francis Stevens and Austin Hall, were sending Baird stories which had already been rejected elsewhere.
  In the middle of the year Baird received five stories submitted by H. P. Lovecraft; Baird bought all five of them.  Lovecraft, who had been persuaded by friends to submit the stories, included a cover letter that was so remarkably negative about the quality of the manuscripts that Baird published it in the September 1923 issue, with a note appended saying that he had bought the stories "despite the foregoing, or because of it".  However, Baird insisted that the stories be resubmitted as typed double-spaced manuscripts; Lovecraft disliked typing, and initially decided to resubmit only one story, "Dagon".  It appeared in the October 1923 issue, which was the most noteworthy of Baird's tenure, since it included stories by three writers who would become frequent contributors to Weird Tales: as well as Lovecraft, it marked the first appearance in the magazine of Frank Owen and Seabury Quinn.
  Robert Weinberg, in his history of Weird Tales, agrees with Ashley that the quality of Baird's issues was poor, but comments that some good stories were published: "it was just that the percentage of such stories was dismally small".  Weinberg singles out "A Square of Canvas" by Rud, and "Beyond the Door" by Paul Suter as "exceptional"; both appeared in the April 1923 issue.  Weinberg also regards "The Floor Above" by M. L. Humphries and "Penelope" by Vincent Starrett, both from the May 1923 issue, and "Lucifer" by John Swain, from the November 1923 issue, as memorable, and comments that "The Rats in the Walls", in the March 1924 issue, was one of Lovecraft's finest stories.  It is unclear whether Baird or Henneberger was responsible for buying Lovecraft's stories; in one of Lovecraft's letters he makes it clear that Baird was keen to acquire his stories, but Henneberger has said that he overrode Baird and that Baird did not like Lovecraft's writing.  It was Henneberger who came up with another idea involving Lovecraft: Henneberger contacted Harry Houdini and made arrangements to have Lovecraft ghost-write a story for him using a plot supplied by Houdini.  The story, "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", appeared under Houdini's name in the May/June/July 1924 issue, though it was nearly lost—Lovecraft left the typed manuscript on the train he took to New York to get married, and as a result spent much of his wedding day retyping the manuscript from the longhand copy he still had.
  The May/June/July 1924 issue included another story: "The Loved Dead", by C. M. Eddy Jr. which included a mention of necrophilia.  According to Eddy, this led to the magazine being removed from the newsstands in several cities, and beneficial publicity for the magazine, helping sales, but in his history of Weird Tales Robert Weinberg reports that he found no evidence of the magazine being banned, and the financial state of the magazine implies there was no benefit to sales either.  However, S. T. Joshi has said the magazine was indeed removed from newsstands in Indiana.
  The cover art during Baird's tenure was dull; Ashley calls it "unattractive", and Weinberg describes the color scheme of the first issue's cover as "less than inspired", though he considers the next month's cover to be an improvement. 
caption: First issue of Weird Tales, dated March 1923.  The cover art is by R. R. Epperly.[59]
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