By Stephen Jones

Dust Jacket Text

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 Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard; and the Californian 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 . . .

STEPHEN JONES lives in London, England. A Hugo Award nominee, he is the winner of four World Fantasy Awards, three International Horror Guild Awards, five Bram Stoker Awards, twenty-one British Fantasy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. One of Britain’s most acclaimed horror and dark fantasy writers and editors, he has more than 165 books to his credit.
He bought his first copy of Weird Tales (September, 1945) as a teenager in the early 1970s from The Atlantis Bookshop in Bloomsbury for a “guinea” (a pound and a shilling). Since then he seems to have accumulated many more issues, along with original artwork, letters and other ephemera related to “The Unique Magazine”.

Contents

• List of Illustrations
• Wonders of the Weird by Ramsey Campbell
• Chapters I to XXXV (240 pages)
• About the Author

Bibliographic Information

The Weird Tales Boys: H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and “The Unique Magazine”. By Stephen Jones. Hornsea, England: Drugstore Indian Press-PS Publishing; September 2023; ISBN 978-1-78636-998-7 (trade paperback), 978-1-78636-997-0 (slipcased hardcover); 258 pages.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in paperback from Amazon.com or directly from the publisher, PS Publishing.