From their origin at the end of the nineteenth century to their decline in the 1950s, 'pulp' magazines entertained the masses with lurid stories in such genres as adventure, Western, romance, crime, fantasy, horror, and science fiction. notable publications, such as Weird Tales, also served as apprenticeships for many new writers, including h.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. howard, and Clark Ashton Smith.
Over the decades, I've read many of the stories by the authors discussed in this collection of essays. This collection primarily focuses on the top authors, based on appearances, whose work was publishd in Weird Tales magazine. Thus, we have: Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C L Moore, Henry Kuttner, H P Lovecraft and others. In many ways, reading this collection reminded me how fun it was to read many of these stories of weird horror and of the supernatural. However, after about the fifth essay, I found that I was losing interest, due to the fact that there's a great deal of repetition in the mentioning of certain writers and of their influences. Still, I'd recommend this book for any devout reader of the weird fiction. But, I'd recommend it to be read at a pace of one or two essays at a time. It's certainly not a straight-through read. I'm also constantly reminded as to how difficult it can be to obtain many of the stories discussed in this book. For instance, Seabury Quinn's novellas have never been collected. Others can be easily found, but one can expect to pay a premium to the rare book dealer. It'd be nice to find all of these authors, and their stories, in affordable availability.