A COLLECTION compiled and edited by Stephen Jones
PUBLICATION DATE  May 2026
INTRODUCTION Stephen Jones
FRONT COVER ARTWORK C. Barker Petrie, Jr.
COVER DESIGN by Smith & Jones
PAGES 482

EDITIONS 

Trade Jacketed Hardcover  ISBN 978-1-80394-509-5 [£25]

Special Signed Jacketed Hardcover. limited to 75 numbered copies signed by Stephen Jones and other contributors and plus one signature sheet from one of the original contributors to the Weiird Tales magazine. ISBN 978-1-80394-512-5 [£40]

ABOUT THE BOOK

VOLUME ONE - The Early Years

THE FIRST ISSUE of Weird Tales landed on American newsstands in early 1923. Many other periodicals had regularly featured horror, science fiction and weird fantasy but Weird Tales was the first title specifically devoted to “the bizarre and unusual”. The brainchild of entrepreneur and weird fiction fan Jacob Clark Henneberger, who co-founded the magazine with Jacob Marcus Lasinger, the new venture lost money under the editorship of Edwin Baird. By early 1924, Baird had been removed and, following a rejected offer to H.P Lovecraft to take over the reigns of the magazine, he was replaced by one of his assistants, Farnsworth Wright.

Although it would prove to be the best decision Weird Tales ever made, throughout the 1920s the magazine continued to struggle to survive, despite experiments in content, design, page-count, size and frequency. Henneberger eventually lost control of the periodical he had founded to his printer, to whom he owed most of his mounting debt.

This first volume celebrates the pulp’s rocky early years, during which the future of the title was still perilous. However, under the guiding hand of Farnsworth Wright (and with a little help from Otis Adelbert Kline), Weird Tales quickly began to establish itself as “The Unique Magazine”. It started to attract a regular readership with writers and artists that included H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Seabury Quinn, Frank Owen, Donald Wandrei and others who are forgotten today.

Weird Tales finally established itself as one of the most influential pulp magazines of the 20th century—a position it retains more than a century after it was first published.