A bit more than 103 years ago, the first issue of Weird Tales reached newsstands across North America. The magazine would be published consistently for over three decades, with the title revived sporadically ever since. The original Weird Tales would become a significant influence on the development of the fantasy and horror genres, and would lend its name to a subgenre of fantasy and a certain tone in fiction: the weird tale.

That entire first run of Weird Tales, ‘the unique magazine,’ is available at the Internet Archive. I thought it’d be an interesting project to look at it issue by issue, reading the magazine as it was published and discussing each issue as a whole. It was the venue for much of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, as well as a home for work by Robert Bloch, C.L. Moore, and Ray Bradbury, among many others. I wondered what it would be like to read those stories in the context of the other tales in the magazine by lesser-known writers; and to consider each issue as a package, a collection, with its cover and editorials and letters. And its ads; to look at the magazine holistically is to consider the many irruptions of its era into the experience of the fiction.

Much has already been written about Weird Tales and I will necessarily be indebted to the excellent work done at blogs like Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, as well as places like the WeirdLit subreddit. I’m intending ultimately to write at least one post per month, going issue by issue through the magazine. For at least the first few issues, I’ll be writing two posts about each issue, one discussing the layout and editorial matter and nonfiction of the magazine and one looking specifically at the fiction. But I also feel it’s important to look at the world of 1923 into which Weird Tales was born: I want to look at what life was like in North America at the time, and how that turns up in the fiction; and what was happening culturally, and the shape of the pulp magazine marketplace, and what someone with a taste for fantasy fiction might have been reading.

My plan, therefore, is as follows: tomorrow I’ll start with the first part of my look at the first issue of Weird Tales, examining the magazine as a complete object, in its ads and covers, as well as its nonfiction and editorials. I’ll follow that next Sunday with the first post about about life in 1923. The Sunday after that, I’ll have the second part of my look at the first issue. And so on going forward, alternating posts about aspects of 1923 with posts about issues of the magazine. Eventually I’ll run out of the historical posts, but I look forward to going on with the examination of Weird Tales.

As it’s been a couple of years since I’ve written for this site, a re-introduction’s in order. So: I’m a Montreal-area writer who has had some fiction published, notably “The Word of Azrael” in the print version of Black Gate. In recent years, I’ve been trying to remain active as a critic here and at Splice Today while battling chronic fatigue. I’ve also started a Patreon that’s home to a short fiction project, The Book of Days, an ongoing series of loosely-connected tales of varying genres, most of which have some weird overtone; the ultimate idea is to write a story for each day of the year, based on the entries in a Victorian Book of Days.

My struggle with fatigue is regrettably at odds with my attraction to long-term projects. But, frankly, having long-term projects keeps me going. I’m interested in fantasy, and history, and the weird; and this, I hope, will be the perfect fusion of all those things.

It begins tomorrow.

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Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. You can buy collections of his essays on fantasy novels here and here. His Patreon, hosting a short fiction project based around the lore within a Victorian Book of Days, is here. You can find him on Facebook, or follow his Bluesky account, @bookofdays.