Lovecraft, Smith and Howard — The Weird Tales 3
Lovecraft, Howard and Smith Dominated the Top Magazine of the Era
Oct 3, 2008
The Gentleman
H.P. Lovecraft, of course, not only dominates weird fiction today with tentacles everywhere—Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, etc.—but in his day helped to save the magazine he always criticized. His first story in Weird Tales, “Dagon,” appeared in October 1923. Until and beyond his death, his brooding, atmospheric stories were highlights in the often grim pages of the magazine.
Not all of his tales appeared under his own name. He never was able to support himself with his fiction, so he “revised”—often meaning “wrote from scratch”—stories by others. He second appearance in WT was the next month, November 1923. It was “The Invisible Ghost” under his future wife Sonia Greene’s name.
Lovecraft also ghosted for C.M. Eddy and even Harry Houdini in WT.
Less than a year after he started writing there, and a little more than year after WT published its first issue, it was going to shut down. As a blowout farewell, the May-June-July 1924 issue was published. In it, HPL ghosted “The Loved Dead” for Eddy. This story, with hints of necrophilia, stirred up enough interest to bring the ailing WT back to life.
The Poet
Clark Ashton Smith, originally known as poet on the West Coast, first appeared in Weird Tales in the September 1928 issue with his story, “The Ninth Skeleton.” Next was “The End of the Story” in the May 1930 issue. In June 1930, his “The Last Incantation,” often considered his first Cthulhu Mythos story, appeared. “A Rendezvous in Averoigne,” one of his more famous tales—and the title of the latest collection of his short stories from Arkham House—appeared in the April-May 1931 issue.
Smith wrote for other magazines, too, including Strange Tales, but it was his appearances in WT that made his name.
The Cowboy
Robert E. Howard, the youngest of the three and one of the most prolific writers of the time, begin publishing in Weird Tales with “Spear and Fang” in July 1925. His most remembered and beloved stories were of Conan the Barbarian, but he wrote other series and several stories in his friend HPL’s Cthulhu Mythos (so named not by Lovecraft, but by editor/writer August Derleth after HPL’s death).
Howard’s mythos stories in WT include “Children of the Night” (April 1931), “The Black Stone” (November 1931) and “The Fire of Asshurbanipal” (December 1936).
In the December 1932 issue of WT, he introduced Conan in his story “The Phoenix on the Sword.” He wrote many more in the series, including a total of 18 in WT. Many fragments were completed by others—including L.Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter—years later.
His other characters, often appearing in WT, include Solomon Kane, Kull and Bran Mak Morn, introduced only a month before Conan.
Lovecraft, born in 1890, died March 15, 1937. Howard, born in 1906, took his own life June 11, 1936. Smith, born in 1893, lived until Aug. 14, 1961, but he ceased writing to level he had been following the deaths of his two friends, HPL and REH.
All three became enormous influences on genré fiction. Lovecraft’s works are available in numerous collections with definitive version from Arkham House. Howard’s works also have been collected in paperbacks and hard covers. A new five-volume set of Smith’s works recently appeared titled, The Collected Works of Clark Ashton Smith.
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