J. C. Henneberger founded the American pulp magazine to cover the field of "Poe-Machen Shudders" in 1923. It followed the success of titles by Rural Publications, which appeared in a variety of genres, notably College Humour and Magazine of Fun. Weird Tales was in publication until 1954 and was most successful during the 1930s under the editorship of Farnsworth Wright. During this period it published fiction by influential fantasy and horror writers, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, Edmond Hamilton, Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, and August Derleth.

Henneberger identified that there were quality writers who were unable to place their stories in the mixed-genre magazines of the early 1920s and presumed that there was an audience for stories that were weird and macabre. He established the character of the magazine through a policy of reprinting "weird" classics, such as Bulwer Lytton's "The...