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The Weird Tales Boys
When the history of fantasy and horror fiction is being discussed, the pulp magazine Weird Tales is inevitably mentioned. Originally selling for just twenty-five cents on news-stands, and printed on low-grade ‘pulp’ paper, Weird Tales was the first magazine devoted exclusively to weird and fantastic fiction. The three most important and influential writers to have their work published in the pages of ‘The Unique Magazine’ were Rhode Island horror writer H.P. Lovecraft; the Texan creator of Conon the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard; and the California poet, short story writer, illustrator and sculptor, Clark Ashton Smith.
In The Weird Tales Boys, award-winning writer and editor Stephen Jones explores the relationship between this trio of—in many ways flawed—friends, and how their work and lives became not just entwined with each other, but also with so many other authors and publishers of the period. The legacy of these writers—Lovecraft, Howard and Smith—and the periodical in which their work appeared still has a profound influence on horror and fantasy fiction after more than a century, as The Weird Tales Boys’ continue to cast their long, talented and sometimes controversial shadows over the genre today. This is their story...
In The Weird Tales Boys, award-winning writer and editor Stephen Jones explores the relationship between this trio of—in many ways flawed—friends, and how their work and lives became not just entwined with each other, but also with so many other authors and publishers of the period. The legacy of these writers—Lovecraft, Howard and Smith—and the periodical in which their work appeared still has a profound influence on horror and fantasy fiction after more than a century, as The Weird Tales Boys’ continue to cast their long, talented and sometimes controversial shadows over the genre today. This is their story...
- GenresNonfictionHorror
253 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2023
36 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Jones
277 books344 followersStephen Jones is an eighteen-time winner of the British Fantasy Award.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 10, 2025
This is an enjoyable look at the lives of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, with emphasis paid to their literary legacy and influence. I'm still not convinced that Smith belongs on the same level as the other two (mightn't Seabury Quinn have been as good or better of a choice?), but his misfortunes and lack of success during his lifetime did seem to parallel theirs. The book is very nicely illustrated with many old photographs and movie posters and illustrations from the period magazines, though they started putting a grainy reproduction of the front half of the cover between chapters about halfway through that was a...well...weird choice. (It's a very nice wraparound cover painted by Les Edwards with the three Boys on the front and their famous creations on the back. I thought a little too much time was spent at times detailing publication data on some of the small-press editions at the expense of biographical data, and some of the film and comic and game information that was inspired by them was a tad tedious but wasn't much of a real distraction. (And now I know there's a film out there called Call Girl of Cthulhu if anyone ever asks.) I enjoyed the fact that Jones presented the events and people of the time in a mostly positive light or chose to say nothing at all. Recent biographers have tended to bash August Derleth, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, and many others. Both Howard and Lovecraft have both been roundly reviled for their racist and sexist leanings, which Jones does address, though briefly, essentially acknowledging their failings but gently pointing out that they were writing popular fiction over a century ago that was supposed to reflect the tenor of the time, and they were not out of line by the conventions of their time. Anyway, I've read several biographies of both Howard and Lovecraft and histories of Weird Tales, but I still enjoyed Jones book quite a bit, and learned a bit along the way, particularly about Smith.
October 2, 2023
I have to confess I found this a little bit disappointing. Perhaps because I’ve read a good deal about the “Weird Tales Boys” elsewhere, the biographical elements here are quite slight. But still, too much of this book is basically a sort of narrative bibliography, just detailing what books where published, by whom, and what they contained, which makes for very dry reading after a while. I suppose I was hoping for more of what the blurb promises: “Stephen Jones explores the relationship between this trio”, but there’s very little, for instance, on their correspondence, their differences of opinion, how they influenced one another’s work, and so on. Nicely illustrated, though.
April 27, 2025
A primary research book for my program.
Stephen Jones delivers a compelling portrait of Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith—the flawed titans behind Weird Tales. Their obsessions, struggles, and enduring legacies are explored with clarity and respect. More than just a history, this book offers a glimpse into the haunted lives that birthed modern horror and fantasy, as well as the friendships and communities that grew among the magazine’s contributors during the highs of the 1920s and the depths of the Great Depression.
It’s essential reading for fans of the genre or anyone curious about the time and places these men inhabited. Too often, people from the past are mythologized or reduced to a single trait, seen only through the distorted lens of the present. It’s easy to forget they were real people, living real lives and facing real hardships, just like us. Jones gives us a much-needed bit of perspective.
While the book does lose a little momentum in the final chapters—which mostly list adaptations in other media—it’s so packed with fascinating details and vivid storytelling that it more than makes up for it.
Stephen Jones delivers a compelling portrait of Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith—the flawed titans behind Weird Tales. Their obsessions, struggles, and enduring legacies are explored with clarity and respect. More than just a history, this book offers a glimpse into the haunted lives that birthed modern horror and fantasy, as well as the friendships and communities that grew among the magazine’s contributors during the highs of the 1920s and the depths of the Great Depression.
It’s essential reading for fans of the genre or anyone curious about the time and places these men inhabited. Too often, people from the past are mythologized or reduced to a single trait, seen only through the distorted lens of the present. It’s easy to forget they were real people, living real lives and facing real hardships, just like us. Jones gives us a much-needed bit of perspective.
While the book does lose a little momentum in the final chapters—which mostly list adaptations in other media—it’s so packed with fascinating details and vivid storytelling that it more than makes up for it.
October 6, 2023
An intricately researched work investigating the three most famous of the Weird Tales Boys.
H P Lovecraft, Robert E Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, investigating their backgrounds and their writing careers.
Fascinating stuff.
H P Lovecraft, Robert E Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, investigating their backgrounds and their writing careers.
Fascinating stuff.
October 14, 2024
I've read better-written student papers. Sure, there's a lot here, and that's all there is. If you want detailed publication history (here's more or less every edition of how and when all of these people got printed and reprinted and re-reprinted, etc., including small artisan presses with print runs of 100 copies or so), then feast on it.
Are you curious about how the racial politics of Robert E. Howard, who wrote in 1935 that "I have been dissatisfied with my handling of decaying races in stories, for the reason that degeneracy is so prevalent in such races that even in fiction it can not be ignored as a motive and as a fact if the fiction is to have any claim to realism," might comport with Lovecraft's well-known bigotry (which is only glancingly even alluded to, in an offhand dismissal of Lovecraft Country, which "attempted to link H.P. Lovecraft's fiction to racism"), and maybe to that question in the larger genre of weird fiction? Do you want that kind of analysis? Nope. Not a whit.
Are you curious about how we might balance the purpleness of Clark Ashton Smith's prose, which is so overwrought that it makes HPL feel like Denis Johnson, with the quality of his imagination? Or how Howard, a pile of whose Conan books, with the Frazetta illustrations (Conan canon, really), I sped through when I was 16 or so, reads today artistically, and maybe in his sexual and racial politics? Jones handles this, so to speak, in two paragraphs, one of which notes that REH has been accused of racism in pretty much every aspect of his life and art, and also that maybe some Conan stories are anti-racist, the other of which adduces HPL and cancel culture, with terms like racism and bigotry cordoned off in scare quotes. Nothing to see here, folks.
Would you like quotations lobbed in randomly? Every so often, one of them fits with and meaningfully expands the context of its deployment, which comes as a shock, because in general they're simply broad characterizations of the author's work and aesthetic that have at best a tenuous relationship to the previous sentences. You want uncanny? Explain to me the relationship between the following pieces of information. Since this popped up on p.13, I should have known what I was in for:
Although he enjoyed cheese, chocolate, ice cream, and sweet coffee, Lovecraft could not endure the cold and had a life-long aversion to sea food, as he explained to correspondent Donald Wandrei: "The very sight and smell of it nauseate me....one mouthful would make me actually and violently ill."
However, he was inordinately fond of cats and also keenly interested in astronomy and 18th-century architecture.
"However"?! I suppose I should be grateful that the quotation fits the context.
For that matter, would you like a list of conventions? Not a discussion of them, just a list of all the conventions. Maybe you're wondering how the rediscovery of all of these writers read in the wake of Tolkien in the late 60s and early 70s--were people applying them to current circumstances in the way they were clearly taking Tolkien as an alternative to late-60s dissolution, and if so, how did HPL's despairing take, or Howard's revanchist manliness, scan in 1969? Was The Nuge a big Conan fan? Had to be, right?
I assume someone's done this, but looking at how this corpus permeated rock lyrics (e.g. the lines about Gollum in Led Zep's "Ramble On" and bands called things like Bilbo Baggins, whereas the Lovecraftian references I think of crop up a decade or more later in what was then underground metal, in Metallica's "Call of Ktulu" and Morbid Angel's album cover for Altars of Madness, plus their guitarist literally called himself Trey Azagthoth) feels like a fascinating index of fantasy as countercultural refuge. Anyway, not happening here, aside from one paragraph mentioning the psychedelic band H.P. Lovecraft, which nobody has ever heard of.
If you don't want any of those things, except for random-quotation strafing, have I got the book for you!
Are you curious about how the racial politics of Robert E. Howard, who wrote in 1935 that "I have been dissatisfied with my handling of decaying races in stories, for the reason that degeneracy is so prevalent in such races that even in fiction it can not be ignored as a motive and as a fact if the fiction is to have any claim to realism," might comport with Lovecraft's well-known bigotry (which is only glancingly even alluded to, in an offhand dismissal of Lovecraft Country, which "attempted to link H.P. Lovecraft's fiction to racism"), and maybe to that question in the larger genre of weird fiction? Do you want that kind of analysis? Nope. Not a whit.
Are you curious about how we might balance the purpleness of Clark Ashton Smith's prose, which is so overwrought that it makes HPL feel like Denis Johnson, with the quality of his imagination? Or how Howard, a pile of whose Conan books, with the Frazetta illustrations (Conan canon, really), I sped through when I was 16 or so, reads today artistically, and maybe in his sexual and racial politics? Jones handles this, so to speak, in two paragraphs, one of which notes that REH has been accused of racism in pretty much every aspect of his life and art, and also that maybe some Conan stories are anti-racist, the other of which adduces HPL and cancel culture, with terms like racism and bigotry cordoned off in scare quotes. Nothing to see here, folks.
Would you like quotations lobbed in randomly? Every so often, one of them fits with and meaningfully expands the context of its deployment, which comes as a shock, because in general they're simply broad characterizations of the author's work and aesthetic that have at best a tenuous relationship to the previous sentences. You want uncanny? Explain to me the relationship between the following pieces of information. Since this popped up on p.13, I should have known what I was in for:
Although he enjoyed cheese, chocolate, ice cream, and sweet coffee, Lovecraft could not endure the cold and had a life-long aversion to sea food, as he explained to correspondent Donald Wandrei: "The very sight and smell of it nauseate me....one mouthful would make me actually and violently ill."
However, he was inordinately fond of cats and also keenly interested in astronomy and 18th-century architecture.
"However"?! I suppose I should be grateful that the quotation fits the context.
For that matter, would you like a list of conventions? Not a discussion of them, just a list of all the conventions. Maybe you're wondering how the rediscovery of all of these writers read in the wake of Tolkien in the late 60s and early 70s--were people applying them to current circumstances in the way they were clearly taking Tolkien as an alternative to late-60s dissolution, and if so, how did HPL's despairing take, or Howard's revanchist manliness, scan in 1969? Was The Nuge a big Conan fan? Had to be, right?
I assume someone's done this, but looking at how this corpus permeated rock lyrics (e.g. the lines about Gollum in Led Zep's "Ramble On" and bands called things like Bilbo Baggins, whereas the Lovecraftian references I think of crop up a decade or more later in what was then underground metal, in Metallica's "Call of Ktulu" and Morbid Angel's album cover for Altars of Madness, plus their guitarist literally called himself Trey Azagthoth) feels like a fascinating index of fantasy as countercultural refuge. Anyway, not happening here, aside from one paragraph mentioning the psychedelic band H.P. Lovecraft, which nobody has ever heard of.
If you don't want any of those things, except for random-quotation strafing, have I got the book for you!
October 10, 2023
A nice primer to the intertwined history of HPL and REH, and a much needed summary of their friend and colleague Clark Ashton Smith. Stephen Jones provides a summary of each author's humble beginnings with the Weird Tales publication as well as others. He provides enough personal background to give readers a glimpse into the time and place from which these timeless stories sprang. The documentary of the fiction giants lackluster careers and their rebirth spawned by devoted literary acolytes seems almost as implausible as the tales themselves.
The book does devolve into an almost archeological study of nearly mythic publications that kept the fire of these tales burning until their glorious rebirth decades later. He wraps up with a synopsis of modern (70s to present) incarnations of the works and their infestation of all forms of modern media and even their subjection to modern criticism.
All together an excellent read, though I admit to skimming several pages cataloging Arkham and Gnome Press volumes I will never be able to place on my shelves.
The book does devolve into an almost archeological study of nearly mythic publications that kept the fire of these tales burning until their glorious rebirth decades later. He wraps up with a synopsis of modern (70s to present) incarnations of the works and their infestation of all forms of modern media and even their subjection to modern criticism.
All together an excellent read, though I admit to skimming several pages cataloging Arkham and Gnome Press volumes I will never be able to place on my shelves.
December 22, 2023
One of my books of the year. A lovely non-fiction book about Weird Tales magazine and the magazine's stalwarts of H P Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. It has even more of the original illustrations than the 100 Years of Weird, which I also recently read, and is written in that well-researched, knowledgeable style that only comes with experience. Les Edwards' new artwork and an introduction by Ramsey Campbell tops this one off. For anyone interested in the genre's past (as I am) this is a great read.
July 26, 2025
An extensive and fascinating look at the careers of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith that takes us from their upbringings, through their publication in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines of the era, their untimely deaths, and the legacies they left behind. Well written and researched with excellent illustrations and photographs throughout and an essential read for fans of fantasy, horror and science fiction.
February 15, 2024
Didn't really something new from this book, but is was less August Derleth bashing than I am used to, so that was nice. I did spot some information which seemed to be incorrect after reading other biographies.
Standing in its own it was repetitive.
I also was disappointed in the quality of the illustrations, I was expecting them to be quite epic.
But not learning anything new is not a reason for 2 stars, so 3 stars. Would recommend if you want to learn something about the three most substantial weird tales boys.
Standing in its own it was repetitive.
I also was disappointed in the quality of the illustrations, I was expecting them to be quite epic.
But not learning anything new is not a reason for 2 stars, so 3 stars. Would recommend if you want to learn something about the three most substantial weird tales boys.
May 29, 2024
As mentioned elsewhere, this reads like an annotated bibliography. There are some nice stories, but they are often buried under lists of story titles and Weird Tales issue numbers. And boy do some of those lists feel padded like the author was trying to reach a word could. Also, the lack of foot/endnotes is an odd choice.
November 25, 2023
A fantastic biography of not only the three biggest names from Weird Tales but also of the 20s and 30s pulp in general. I've read plenty of books on these gentlemen but I was still able to learn a few new things in these pages as well as enjoy the beautiful accompanying artwork.
January 21, 2024
This is a great and lovely read about the people involved in Weird Tales magazine, which I never had the pleasure of reading myself, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book at all!
July 10, 2025
A fun review of the lives of “ The Three Musketeers “ of “ Weird Tales “ magazine. My only complaint is that there is no index or notes.
July 9, 2024
Full review on Happy Goat Horror:
https://happygoathorror.com/2024/01/2...
If you're a fan of the magazine Weird Tales, I'd imagine you'd love this. I never got the pleasure of reading that magazine, but I feel like I have now that I've enjoyed this lovely collection of essay-style articles about the contributors and the work. It includes issue cover images and other artwork, and fabulous behind-the-scenes info about the writers.
https://happygoathorror.com/2024/01/2...
If you're a fan of the magazine Weird Tales, I'd imagine you'd love this. I never got the pleasure of reading that magazine, but I feel like I have now that I've enjoyed this lovely collection of essay-style articles about the contributors and the work. It includes issue cover images and other artwork, and fabulous behind-the-scenes info about the writers.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews